From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Adrian Robert Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: NeXTStep port preferences Date: Thu, 17 Jul 2008 17:32:13 +0000 (UTC) Message-ID: References: <8966189D-F430-4224-80BA-FA3653642C01@gmail.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1216315970 12584 80.91.229.12 (17 Jul 2008 17:32:50 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 17 Jul 2008 17:32:50 +0000 (UTC) To: emacs-devel@gnu.org Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Thu Jul 17 19:33:38 2008 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([199.232.76.165]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.50) id 1KJXME-0004Ci-Gl for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Thu, 17 Jul 2008 19:33:34 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1]:49558 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1KJXLL-00078Z-PG for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Thu, 17 Jul 2008 13:32:39 -0400 Original-Received: from mailman by lists.gnu.org with tmda-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1KJXLH-00076z-2r for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 17 Jul 2008 13:32:35 -0400 Original-Received: from exim by lists.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1KJXLF-00076B-Ju for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 17 Jul 2008 13:32:34 -0400 Original-Received: from [199.232.76.173] (port=33328 helo=monty-python.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1KJXLF-00075V-60 for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 17 Jul 2008 13:32:33 -0400 Original-Received: from main.gmane.org ([80.91.229.2]:53246 helo=ciao.gmane.org) by monty-python.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS-1.0:RSA_AES_256_CBC_SHA1:32) (Exim 4.60) (envelope-from ) id 1KJXL4-0002gz-Rz for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 17 Jul 2008 13:32:32 -0400 Original-Received: from list by ciao.gmane.org with local (Exim 4.43) id 1KJXL2-0002Xj-QD for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 17 Jul 2008 17:32:21 +0000 Original-Received: from 72.171.0.146 ([72.171.0.146]) by main.gmane.org with esmtp (Gmexim 0.1 (Debian)) id 1AlnuQ-0007hv-00 for ; Thu, 17 Jul 2008 17:32:20 +0000 Original-Received: from Adrian.B.Robert by 72.171.0.146 with local (Gmexim 0.1 (Debian)) id 1AlnuQ-0007hv-00 for ; Thu, 17 Jul 2008 17:32:20 +0000 X-Injected-Via-Gmane: http://gmane.org/ Original-Lines: 49 Original-X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org X-Gmane-NNTP-Posting-Host: main.gmane.org User-Agent: Loom/3.14 (http://gmane.org/) X-Loom-IP: 72.171.0.146 (Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X; en-US) AppleWebKit/523 (KHTML, like Gecko, Safari/523.10) OmniWeb/v621.0.99313) X-detected-kernel: by monty-python.gnu.org: Linux 2.6, seldom 2.4 (older, 4) X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Original-Sender: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:100892 Archived-At: David Reitter gmail.com> writes: > The new NeXTStep / Cocoa port contains a "Preferences" dialog. > > Is this wanted, or just a mistake when merging? It is inconsistent > with all the other customizations, at least in terms of UI. The logic is similar to the "Options" menu, which itself is "inconsistent with all other customizations": put a few of the most frequently desired quick changes in a convenient place. > Where are these preferences stored? They are stored using the NS equivalent to X resources, as has been discussed previously on this list and various OS X emacs lists. > A better preferences system would be much welcomed, but it should be > compatible with existing customizations. The selection of preferences > seems arbitrary; why the cursor type, or line spacing? The preferences window controls surface aspects of the GUI that were not already controlled by other GUI methods. Font, color, frame dimensions, and toolbar presence are handled by mouse actions or popup windows (at least, until the font and color panels will be removed from Emacs.app). The modifier key mappings were also added because they are a notorious point of varying preferences among OS X users. Anyway, the functioning of this facility is already broken by recent checkins which override the system highlight color and antialiasing selections. I suspect it will quickly be removed. Unfortunately users will never be consulted. It is also not something easy to maintain outside of GNU Emacs itself (e.g. in a distribution like Aquamacs) because it involves integrated Objective C code and additional files going into the bundle. The desire to keep all GUI interfaces to Emacs similar to one another is a reasonable one. However, some concessions to platform convention and user convenience ought to be tolerated on a case-by- case basis depending on the user-benefit to obtrusiveness ratio. Otherwise, at least in this case, there's no real reason not to just use the X11 version on OS X (and GNUstep platforms). Apple has not said they will stop supporting X.