Re: Emacs Survey: Toolbars

[Lars Ingebrigtsen]

Dmitry Gutov <dgutov@yandex.ru> writes:

> I also think the poll is heavily biased in favor of either Reddit
> users (who are largely either power-users, or those who inspire to
> be), or experienced Emacs users in general.

My impression is that that's not accurate -- there's certainly
experienced people who hang out on the Emacs Reddit group, but there's
also a lot of new users.  (And my guess is that the latter group is
larger, based on the questions I see asked there.)

In the mega-thread about modernising Emacs, the common refrain was that
we needed actual data on what users do.  We now have some data, and I
don't think we should just dismiss that data because of statistical
quibbles.

And the data says that, at present, the Emacs toolbars are not very
useful.  Stefan's point about improving the toolbars so that they become
useful is good, but I'm not sure that's realistic: We've had these
toolbars for decades, and not much has happened with them.  (Except
growing progressively smaller.)

I mean, look at the toolbar that happens when you "emacs -Q": You get an
Emacs with a scratch buffer...  with a "Save" icon.  In a buffer that
can't be saved.  That's how much attention we've spent on toolbars in
two decades.

All the items in the *scratch* buffer toolbar are more natural for a
menu, and they're already present there.

-- 
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
   bloggy blog: http://lars.ingebrigtsen.no