[Gnu-arch-users] Re: [OT] fixing emacs

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

>>>>> "Tom" == Tom Lord <address@hidden> writes:

    Tom> Either you've misunderstood what I've proposed or you have a
    Tom> web site problem in the sense that your website gives no
    Tom> obvious hint of these capabilities.

Deeper than that, we have a developer discipline problem.  The
developer who put this stuff in (before I took over the code base that
became 21.4) only wanted to make sure that those features were
available so he could produce a reasonable facsimile of Windows
facilities for Windows users.  This stuff is basically undocumented,
except for a brief mention in the docstring to "make-glyph".  I'm not
sure who let this stuff get in to a release-track code base with so
little documentation.

    Tom> but could you summarize, with this capability in mind and
    Tom> also point to the the right .el files to read.

Basic facilities:
Menubar->File->Open... shows the old, incredibly ugly file browser,
which is just a general frame configured appropriately.
Menubar->Edit->Find... shows the new, spiffy "native layout"-based
search dialog.  It has a focus problem (it seems that all Windows
dialogs are what X calls "application modal", so this works properly
on Windows), to be able to type in the search box you need to give the
dialog focus by clicking on any of the other controls (even one which
is already enabled).

There's only one interesting .el: dialog-items.el.  That's where the
implementation of the search dialog is.

I hope you're not wasting your time.  My point is not that this stuff
is wonderful; it's that it is available, could be improved rapidly,
but nobody cares enough to (a) improve it (core developers) or (b)
request it (3rd party library developers).

I think a reasonable test of the facility (as _proof of concept_ for
usability) is if I can come up with a "native layout"-style file
browser with the same functionality as the old-style "specialized
general frame" browser we currently have.  Let me know if the
implementation of the search dialog in dialog-items.el is
_conceptually_ way off what you're talking about.

-- 
Institute of Policy and Planning Sciences     http://turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp
University of Tsukuba                    Tennodai 1-1-1 Tsukuba 305-8573 JAPAN
               Ask not how you can "do" free software business;
              ask what your business can "do for" free software.