Re: The minibuffer vs. Dialog Boxes (Re: Making XEmacs be more up-to-date)

[Michael Toomim]

Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> > From: Terje Bless <address@hidden>
> > Date: Sat, 20 Apr 2002 13:03:10 +0200

> > And speaking of which, the thing that confused me most over the years was
> > the terminology. A "buffer" is a "document" and a "frame" is a "window"?
> > Why do I have to choose "New Frame" when what I /really/ want is a new
> > window? And I don't work with "buffers"; I work with "files" or
> > "documents". "Buffers" are something hardware /has/ or that I implement in
> > code, it's not something I work with day-to-day.
>
>
> There's a Glossary in the manual to ease the culture shock.  I think
> we should advertise the glossary more, and perhaps make it more
> accessible by providing special links to it from doc strings etc.
>
> I don't think it's reasonable to expect Emacs to change its
> terminology because most of it predates the one you are accustomed to.
> For example, Emacs was talking about windows when glass teletype
> displays were the only ones in existence.
>
> As for buffers, I disagree that it's unused in the context used by
> Emacs.  I've seen several editors that do the same.

I agree with Terje on this.  If XEmacs is to be designed to be more easily 
usable by newbies, the terminology should change along with the interface.

I don't understand your point that "the term window used to mean something 
else"... I mean, if we're going to ignore the new terminology, why don't we 
just call programs 'punch cards', because that's what they used to be?

Changing the terminology would help new users, and I think that old users 
would be able to get used to the changes pretty quickly, since they'd all be 
pretty intuitive (assuming they're just being updated to the terms commonly 
used today).