UI pleasantness.

[swestrup]

I rant a bunch here about bad UI design, so I think its only fair when I point out when someone gets it right.

I am now using XEmacs as my programming editor of choice because:

1. They are actively trying to fix some of the broken/outdated ideas in standard Emacs.
2. They actually care that the Windows port have actual meaningful functionality. I can actually use the e-mail, FTP and other telecom elisp modues for the first time ever.

Now, they ain't perfect, but thats mainly because the original Emacs source is huge and is fundamentally broken in lots of places. Fixing foundation issues while maintaining backwards compatibility with a huge set of crufty modules is no easy task.

Anyway, for a while now its been possible in Emacs to click on various screen decorations like the window status bar, and have that perform some programmable action. Xemacs has taken that further and clicking on different places on the status bar has different effects depending on what you click on. So, for example if you click on a minor-mode in the mode-list section (overstrke, word-wrap, auto-fill, etc) then that mode is toggled off. I was just thinking that a nice extension would be to have a right click on the mode-list bring up a list of all minor modes that had somehow registered themselves as being appropriate to the major mode, and let you turn any on that you wish. So, I right-clicked on the mode-list, to see if anything was currently bound to that action, and was startled to see the exact menu that I had just been wishing for!

It a sign of GOOD UI work when an unknown feature is in the exact place and works in the exact way you would wish for...

Comments

[sps.livejournal.com]

That minor mode menu is in baseline emacs, too. I just tried it.

Re:

[swestrup]

Then its new since the last version I used. I now wonder where it was invented first. Its beginning to look like XEmacs is having the effect of dragging Emacs, kicking and screaming, into the third millenium.

[sps.livejournal.com]

Well, you know. RMS and Larry. And JWZ. Probably me, too. No one knows what's up with any of them.