Re: Platform independent graphical display for Emacs

[Stephen Berman]

On Fri, 24 Dec 2021 10:55:03 +0100 Lars Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org> wrote:

> There's definitely different cultures surrounding the toolkit issue.
> Some people want all their applications on the OS they use to look the
> same, and some people want the application they use to look the same on
> all OS-es.  I think the astounding success of VSCode points to the first
> group of people putting up with it if they have to, but there's a lot of
> grumbling.
>
> Anyway, this inspired me to have a look at the no-toolkit build of Emacs
> for the first time in years, and...  it's a bit rough.  There's no HiDPI
> support, apparently, so all the icons/menus look unusably tiny on this
> screen.  And the scroll bar apparently works the same as an xterm in
> 1989?  That is, left/right mouse clicks goes down/up, and you can't drag
> it at all.
>
> So it's no wonder that few people are using that.  But if want to cater
> more to people that want Emacs to look the same on all operating
> systems, there's at least a base to start working from, because it seems
> to work fine otherwise.

Perhaps the main issue keeping me from regularly using the no-toolkit
build is the inability to navigate menu-bar menus and select entries
from them with the keyboard (I disable the menu bar but not infrequently
pop up the global menu with F10).  If I had enough knowledge and time,
this would be one of the first things I would fix.

Steve Berman