Re: GNU Emacs raison d'etre

[Stefan Kangas]

Dmitry Gutov <address@hidden> writes:

> Fair enough. But in the end, you're probably asking for something that
> doesn't exist in Emacs yet. Like, no graphical switches for buffers
> that's equal in power to the minibuffer-based one.

Which capabilities are you referring to more exactly here?  I'm not too
familiar with the details, so please forgive me if this is obvious.

> I agree that the prompts could be positioned better, and the result
> could be better readability. After all, if one uses the minibuffer a
> lot, isn't it a shame that it resides somewhere down below, and uses the
> same font as the rest of Emacs?

I have never thought about it, but I personally think it's a very good
idea.  In combination with that, simple changes like giving it a border
or a different background, would also help make it more visible.

One frequent annoyance for me in more "modern" software is that the
popups hide the thing they are about.  For example, a "Search and
replace" dialog box positioned on top of the text it matches, so you
have to manually move the dialog box around to see what you're doing.
I think we should try to avoid that, at least by default, so maybe the
top positioning is a better default than in the center.

> In that, I think VS Code, Atom, etc, have a better idea by positioning
> their input area somewhere near the top of the window, in an easy-to-see
> dropdown. Somewhere in the middle of the frame could also work.

I have never used them.  Do you mean something like this (found on a
quick search)?

https://flight-manual.atom.io/using-atom/images/goto.png

Or could you provide a better screenshot or video of that?

> I'd like to see Emacs something like this by default someday.
[...]
> Or at least, the above would be a better solution, by improving
> minibuffer's usability for both newbies and existing users.

Agreed.

Best regards,
Stefan Kangas