Re: bad UI defaults

[Gerd Moellmann]

[Just reading up on emacs-pretest-bug on gmane, and I can't resist
 adding my ceterum censeo, because I mentioned two of Dave's points
 myself a long time ago.]

Dave Love <address@hidden> writes:

> I haven't used the current codebase much, but there are several user
> interface things in the head code that have been changed to what I
> think are bad defaults.
> 
>  * The `mode-line-inactive' face is bright compared with `mode-line',
>    and different to the menu bar and scroll bar colours.  That means
>    that with two windows -- my most common configuration -- the eye is
>    drawn to the wrong window.

Speaking for myself, I wouldn't say my attention is necessarily drawn
to the wrong window, dunno, but it is certainly drawn away from the
cursor, with C-x o for instance, because of the visual effects
elsewhere on the screen.

For me, a visual indication which window is the active one is
generally helpful only when I'm not in Emacs.  99% of the time, with
C-x 2, C-x o, and all the other commands, I know up front where the
active cursor will be, at least approximately, and especially in the
approximately case, a light show somewhere else is majorly annoying :).

>  * The changed behaviour of the blinking cursor -- solid and empty
>    box, rather than solid and absent -- makes it hard to read the
>    character under the cursor, at least with the font I use
>    (lucidatypewriter-medium-*-normal-*-*-120).

It's not obvious to me that this new blinking style is clearly
superior to the usual style or that a majority of users has demanded
this change (which would be suprising for me in the first place
because Emacs is the only application I've ever encountered offering
such a blinking style.)  To the contrary, as Dave and myself have
mentioned in the past, the new style has a drawback---it makes the
character under the cursor less readable.

There's of course nothing to be said against offering this new
blinking style as on option, but I can't imagine a reason for making
it the default.

>  * The smaller (one-pixel?) width of the outlines of boxes and arrows
>    in the menus means they pretty well fade away on my 1280×1024
>    display. 

Same for me, same resolution, wearing glasses.  If I'm not looking
very carefully, I don't see the arrows in the menu at all.  I gather
this is to make Emacs integrate better with some Gnome style, but I
can't say I like it :).

>    It's not clear whether or how you can revert that.  [For some
>    reason, the menu bar face is also different from what I see in
>    21.2 with the same X resources, but I don't know why.]
> 
>  * The new mode-line order is worse IMO.  Also it's hard for the less
>    sophisticated to revert to what they're used to, since it's not
>    customizable in an accessible way.  To me the time, mail status and
>    battery status are important and shouldn't be shunted off the
>    right.  I don't care about the line number and people who worry
>    about line numbers usually aren't using Emacs properly.  I may be
>    in the minority, but I'd expect that to be the case also for a lot
>    of users who'd have more trouble changing it.  I think there should
>    at least be some Custom option to allow you to reorder the normal
>    elements of the mode line.

I hardly use the mode line for anything, so I haven't a strong 
opinion on this one.