Improving the Tools menu

[Stefan Kangas]

Dmitry Gutov <dmitry@gutov.dev> writes:

> On 15/03/2025 19:08, Cecilio Pardo wrote:
>> In the Tools menu, "Project Support (EDE)" appears right before
>> "Project", and "Language Server Support (Eglot)". Then comes "Source
>> Code Parsers (Semantic)".
>>
>> And this is on the top part of the menu. So new users scanning the
>> available tools will see them way before others like "Version Control",
>> and probably conclude that those are important things to check.
>
> Good point.
>
> Stefan, what do you say about removing those menu items? Or at least
> moving them to some less prominent location.
>
> Right now we got both EDE and Project items there, as well as Semantic
> and Eglot, all on nearby 4 lines. That's probably not helpful for an
> average user.

The ordering that Eli installed is already an improvement.  I'd also be
fine with removing these entries, since we probably don't want to
highlight them too prominently these days; this discussion shows they're
not especially well-maintained, and presumably also more rarely used.

If there's a reason to keep them, perhaps we could move them to a
submenu labeled CEDET or similar, to help set expectations.

---

In general, I wonder if parts of this menu might benefit from a more
thorough review.  For instance, the Eglot entry could perhaps mention
LSP explicitly.  I'm also curious about the inclusion of EUDC -- does it
work out of the box without requiring additional setup?  (Selecting, for
example, "Get email" prompts me for a directory server, but AFAICT
there's no mention of LDAP in that flow.  I've never used EUDC myself,
so perhaps I'm missing something.)

Would it make sense to promote something like `dictionary` instead,
which seems to be more immediately usable with little or no
configuration?  Also, the "Read Net News" entry for Gnus might be a bit
opaque to users unfamiliar with Usenet -- I suspect many might interpret
it as referring to mainstream news sites, or even RSS feeds.

More broadly, maybe we should consider whether entries that require
significant setup to function properly should be included in the menu by
default.  Removing them might even help reduce confusion and make the
menu feel less like a potential footgun.