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yonglehou / ergoemacs

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improve emacs's customize feature UI #23

Open GoogleCodeExporter opened 9 years ago

GoogleCodeExporter commented 9 years ago 
Customization interface button needs to be simplified.

Rational:

The customize feature in emacs introduced in (emacs21? or at least emacs22) 
makes it possible to customize emacs without needing to uderstand elisp, by 
using a text based GUI. Mainly pressing buttons. However, the interface is 
complex and not intuitive, as is often reported in online forums or blogs.

If the UI follows Microsoft Windows model, also largely followed by Linux's 
Gnome and KDE, it would be a improvement because of familiarity.

Roughly, the suggested changes are:

 • Set for Current Session → rename to Apply.

 • Save for Future Sessions → remove. (when cust buffer is closed, ask if 
user want to save changes)

 • Undo Edits → remove. (because user can just close it, and when prompted 
to save, choose no.)

 • Reset → remove. (again, user can just close and not save. The possible 
advantage of Reset and remain on the change in case user still want to 
edit, is trivial.)

 • Erase Customization → rename to “Revert to Emacs Default”. (“Revert To 
Default” is more common a UI idiom.)

 • Finish → rename to Close.

Original issue reported on code.google.com by xah...@gmail.com on 15 Sep 2009 at 7:56

GoogleCodeExporter commented 9 years ago 
Currently, M-x Customize is pretty much useless because it won't save 
customizations
anymore. The next start-up, they are all gone.
I dont see the interface getting less complex and unintuitive just with these
changes, on the contrary, I believe the more visual and explicit the better, 
taking
away buttons but keeping their functionality alive by "prompt at close" is the 
wrong
way to go. Just closing should mean discarding any settings, only prompting the 
user
if he is aware of unsaved changes in the buffer. Deliberate visual (not to say
haptic) differentiation between 'try out once' and 'save forever' is a good 
thing and
allows newbeginners to experiment.

Original comment by milan.santosi@gmail.com on 24 Sep 2009 at 3:48

GoogleCodeExporter commented 9 years ago 
[deleted comment]
GoogleCodeExporter commented 9 years ago 
Milan (milan.santosi@gmail.com) has further comment on this:
http://groups.google.com/group/ergoemacs/browse_frm/thread/c415f26b9b3ffb50

Original comment by xah...@gmail.com on 24 Sep 2009 at 10:26

GoogleCodeExporter commented 9 years ago 
btw, for some reason, when i do M-x customize with GNU emacs on Windows, i 
don't see 
Save For Future Session anymore. I recall it was there. I am puzzled. David, 
did we do 
something that changed this? I wanted to ask about this before but just didn't 
do yet.

Original comment by xah...@gmail.com on 24 Sep 2009 at 10:35

GoogleCodeExporter commented 9 years ago 
about this issue... i think Milan's comment has merit... however, i think that 
the 
current way of customize has a lot usability problem. For example, try to 
customize-
group the whitespace-mode. See: http://xahlee.org/emacs/whitespace-mode.html

Original comment by xah...@gmail.com on 24 Sep 2009 at 10:37