🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <9302262151.AA00473@banach.math.ep.utexas.edu> jerry@math.ep.utexas.EDU (Jerry Graves) writes:
>I won't say that those who prefer a separate minibuffer don't deserve
>a choice, but it would be my guess the Jamie and fellow coders at
>Lucid would have less of a headache by eliminating a seldom used
>option.  If it makes any difference, when I upgraded Epoch from 3.2 to
>4.0, everyone here was very pleased that this orphan minibuffer had
>finally returned home.

>In fact, I completely disabled the separate minibuffer even as an
>option, because observation of users familiar with ordinary Emacs made
>it clear they could never quite figure out where it was or what it was
>doing.  I think if the minibuffer had not been separate to begin with
>(in Epoch), there would have been so few requests for it that it would
>have never been implemented, but I am not in a position to back this
>claim with any hard evidence, since for all I know, it was implemented
>_because_ of user requests which happened before I joined this mailing
>list two years ago.

I disagree with this post in two ways.  First, I very much like
the separate minibuffer.  Mine sits at the bottom of my screen and
I know where to look for it automatically.  I must admit that
for the first couple of days I was confused, but since then I've
tried Epoch without the separate minibuffer and found it very annoying.

Second, (and without meaning to flame) I find the attitude of
'I know whats best for the users at my site, so I'll just "disable
[...] even as an option"' to be more than annoying.  Vendors 
and system managers fall into this all too often.  This attitude
is not only patronizing, it is usually wrong.   I dont consider myself
particularly a "power user" or anything, but I want to be able
to make up my own mind about options - and 95% of the time when
someone else makes such determination it turns out to be wrong for
_someone_.  

Options should be optional.  Leave them that way.




-- 
jefu <=> Jeff Putnam - New Mexico Tech <=> jefu@nmt.edu 
"Daffodils go Ping! and Oink! // They Really are alarming 
I'm scared of big geraniums // And I'm sure that Lilac's harming"
(Dr. Bertram X. Fegg)