Re: Emacs Survey: Toolbars

[Lars Ingebrigtsen]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

>> What has been suggested is that only modes where it makes sense should
>> enable the toolbar (and there probably aren't that many where it makes
>> much sense).
>
> But that's exactly the situation I described above.  Suppose you type
> "M-x": this enters the minibuffer, where you have a new mode in
> effect, and some (most?) tool-bar buttons make no sense.  Would you
> like those buttons, or maybe the entire tool bar, to be removed now?
>
> Similar situation exists when I have 2 windows, one of them showing
> *scratch*, and switche between them -- would you like the tool bar to
> disappear when I'm in *scratch*?

No, I wouldn't, which is why I don't really suggest doing this.
Somebody may come up with ideas that makes the proposition workeable,
and I see that Drew has one -- he suggests having a blank toolbar in
these instances, and ... perhaps?  It's a lot of "dead" space real
estate, though, so I'm not really enthusiastic.

In the cases you describe today, Emacs does switch between different
toolbars (if the modes in question have different ones).  For instance,
`C-x m', and you'll get the Message toolbar with things like "Send" and
"Preview".  If you `M-x', Emacs will switch to the non-specific toolbar
with things like "Save", all of them greyed out.  This, perhaps, shows
that Drew's idea is a good one -- it's less confusing showing a
completely blank toolbar than one with all the items greyed out?

>> However, that's probably technically difficult -- people have setups
>> where they've computed the size of the Emacs windows based on whether
>> (or not) they have toolbars enabled?  So switching the toolbars on/off
>> dynamically may lead to some difficulties in that area?
>
> That's another complication, but we could perhaps handle it in some
> reasonable way.  Appearing and disappearing tool bar, OTOH, is
> something we need to consider seriously before we decide that such a
> mode of tool-bar display is sensible.

Definitely.

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