Re: Emacs Survey: Toolbars

[Stefan Monnier]

> Of 7.3K respondents, 5K disable toolbars, which is more than two
> thirds.  So perhaps toolbars should default to off?  I know toolbars
> were all the rage in the 90s, but that's apparently not the case now.

FWIw, I believe the toolbar should behave a bit more like the
header-line: it should not "default to off" but instead it should only
exist in those buffers where it is useful.

IMO a toolbar should contain things that are used often, and by "often"
I don't mean "in most sessions" but rather often enough that the time
taken to pick it from the menu-bar would be excessive.
Contrary to the menu-bar, the toolbar is not a good way to advertise
Emacs's functionality because there just isn't enough room to put that
info, so to justify its existence it should be *useful*.

For most major modes, it's hard to find a justification for a toolbar,
and for some major modes, OTOH, it's a no-brainer (e.g. mpc.el).
But I don't think we've done a good job of making use of the toolbar for
the middle ground.

IOW, the current tool-bar is a mechanism that we haven't really tried
hard to make use of it.  Maybe instead of "actions" it should mostly
contain "toggle buttons" for minor modes (and maybe these would need to
be new minor modes, since most of our minor modes are designed under
the principle that they're not toggle at a high frequency)?



        Stefan