Re: Changes in the menu bar

[Jason Rumney]

"Eli Zaretskii" <address@hidden> writes:

> How about the changes below?
> 
> Index: lisp/menu-bar.el
> ===================================================================
> RCS file: /cvs/emacs/lisp/menu-bar.el,v
> retrieving revision 1.187
> diff -c -r1.187 menu-bar.el
> *** lisp/menu-bar.el  2001/11/25 05:46:35     1.187
> --- lisp/menu-bar.el  2001/11/27 19:18:38
> ***************
> *** 853,885 ****
>             :help "Describe this buffer's major and minor mode"))
>   
>   (defvar menu-bar-apropos-menu (make-sparse-keymap "Apropos"))

>   (define-key menu-bar-apropos-menu [apropos-documentation]
> !   '(menu-item "Lookup by Documentation Text..." apropos-documentation
> !               :help
> !           "Find functions and variables whose doc strings match a regexp"))

I think this is backwards. If you want the word "Apropos" displayed,
it should be in the menu item names, with something more obvious (to
new users) for the name of the apropos submenu.  Otherwise new users
will not know to look inside the "Apropos" submenu when they want to
"Lookup by Documentation Text...", and might miss it.

My suggestion would be to call the submenu "Search for Documentation"
(or similar; I am not sure "Lookup" is right, as that implies to me
that I will be doing the looking, not Emacs; more like an index than a
regexp search), and either call the menu items "Apropos Documentation
Text..." etc, or use the word "Apropos" in the tooltip. I think if
the submenu is named appropriately, users will not be confused even
if they don't know the meaning of "Apropos", since they have enough
information from the context to guess what it might mean.


>   (define-key menu-bar-manuals-menu [command]
>     '(menu-item "Find Command in Manual" Info-goto-emacs-command-node
>             :help "Display manual section that describes a command"))

I think this should go in both the manuals menu and the apropos menu
(combined with the name change suggested above), since a user who
wants to search for documentation would expect to find all the ways of
searching in the same place.


-- 
Jason Rumney