🚀 go-pugleaf

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.

-Jerry

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)

In article <9302262151.AA00473@banach.math.ep.utexas.edu> jerry@math.ep.utexas.EDU (Jerry Graves) writes:
>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.

How thoughtful of you.  Perhaps you should disable other options too, in case
it confuses users?  Maybe you should replace emacs with vi, to prevent those of
us who start life with vi from moving up to emacs and getting confused?

>  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.

Arguing that if users had never heard of separate minibuffers, they would never
have asked for it is a little pointless.

I must admit that it took me a while to get used to having one minibuffer in
one place, but I felt that it was sensible and would be a benefit.  I would
like to have the choice, I hope that Lucid/Epoch keep it.  But we get what we
pay for, don't we?!

Si.
-- 
Simon Marshall, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Hull, Hull HU6 7RX, UK
  "Football isn't about life and death.  It's more important than that." Bill
Email: S.Marshall@cs.hull.ac.uk   Phone: +44 482 465951  Fax: 466666   Shankley