File menu changes (suggestions)

[Drew Adams]

Suggestions to change some File menu items. A few of the renamings might be
considered for this release.

1. Unsplit Windows is a very poor name. It doesn't give you a hint of what
it does; in particular, it doesn't suggest that the current window is the
only one that will remain displayed.

It should be named something like `Delete Other Windows' or simply
`One Window'.

2. Don't reference "buffer" or "file" in File menu items, when this just
refers to the current buffer/file (or the one that will become current). The
unreferenced object in a File menu item is understood to be the current
buffer/file. And the distinction between file and buffer is not needed here.

 - New File                    -> New (but Open is better - see 3, below)
 - Save (current buffer)       -> Save
 - Close (current buffer)      -> Close
 - Save Buffer As              -> Save As
 - Print Buffer                -> Print
 - PostScript Print Buffer     -> PostScript Print
 - Revert Buffer               -> Revert

People are used to all of these File commands in other applications. You
don't see "Save Page" or "Close Page" in Web-browsers or "Save File" in
other editors.

In particular:

a. Currently, there is an inconsistency wrt "Buffer" and "(current buffer)".
These should be made consistent, since the same thing (the current buffer)
is involved in each case. It is not as if one acted on the current buffer
and the other prompted for an existing buffer to act upon.

b. New File does not really create a new file; it opens a buffer (new or
existing) that can be saved to a file (new or existing). Not mentioning
"file" and "buffer" avoids the distinction, which doesn't matter here
anyway. Mentioning "file" and "buffer", and using "file" where it should be
"buffer", just misleads. So, New is better than New File (but see 3, below).


3. WRT 2b, it is true that the file or buffer opened need not in fact be
new, so even "New" is misleading. The problem arises because we need a name
to distinguish open-new-or-existing-buffer-for-new-or-existing-file from
Open File (existing file only). A better name for New would be just "Open".
Open File is technically "open existing file", but "Open File" is adequate
for this action, and it fits with Open Directory and Insert File - explicit
mention of "File" suggests an existing file here.


4. A better name for Revert is Reopen. Just as Paste is preferable to Yank
in a menu, so is Reopen preferable to Revert: more users will understand it
immediately.


5. Move all of the window and frame stuff to a new menu, "Frames". This menu
is analogous to the "Buffers" menu.