Re: buttons for the ediff control frame

[Dan Nicolaescu]

Michael Kifer <address@hidden> writes:

  > >     Understanding how to use the ediff little control frame is kind of
  > >     hard for first time users.
  > >     It might help if it had some graphical buttons...
  > >     A few buttons for the most used functions should be enough.
  > > 
  > > Keep 'em small, please.
  > > 
  > > IMO, graphics that represent the various actions might not be very
  > > self-explanatory. But it could in any case be good to have clickable
  > > buttons, even if they were really just hot text zones. Some suggestions on
  > > graphics/text below. The "buttons" could be hot zones in the ediff help
  > > buffer or in its mode line.
  > 
  > I don't think this is useful at all. In any case, the XEmacs version
  > supports a toolbar that has 10 buttons (disabled by default). If anybody
  > cares to port this to Emacs - fine. I myself think that this is useless and
  > don't feel like spending time on it.
 
I looked at the XEmacs code (ediff-tbar.el) and it seems to use
features that emacs does not have. So straight porting cannot be done,
but implementing something similar is not hard using button widgets.

I can implement this. But the only way this feature might make sense
is if was enabled by default. Advanced users already know the
ediff keybindings (and could turn off the buttons if they so
desire). Buttons would be used by newer users that won't know how to
turn them on. 

So would you agree to have the such a feature turned on by default?

Thanks
                --dan