Re: "Adobe Brackets like" editing in emacs

[Ted Zlatanov]

On Thu, 20 Mar 2014 18:28:44 +0200 Eli Zaretskii <address@hidden> wrote: 

>> From: Ted Zlatanov <address@hidden>
>> Date: Thu, 20 Mar 2014 02:23:55 -0400
>> 
EZ> I don't get it: switching between adjacent windows is a single
EZ> keystroke away (bind it to a key, if you are annoyed by "C-x o").
>> 
>> I have, but looking in *two* places is a kind of context switch and
>> clutters the display with more windows.

EZ> How is another window different from having contents of another file
EZ> inserted into the same window?  The only difference is the mode line
EZ> between them -- is that really such a big deal?

David Kastrup explained it better than I could.

>> I also use `last-buffer' a lot, but that's also a context switch.

EZ> Nothing a simple minor mode couldn't handle.

Please don't take any of my comments as feature requests.  RMS asked for
comments and I provided my thoughts and experience.  I think it's
especially important to look at Literate Programming and general text
formatting for inspiration.  I like the direction David Engster took
with his quick hack.

EZ> Look at this another way: someone suggests that we adopt a "cool
EZ> feature" seen in another editor.  That editor is for editing HTML
EZ> (which is hardly the main focus of Emacs), and the specific feature we
EZ> are discussing here is not the only one, maybe even not the most
EZ> important one, in Brackets -- just look at the videos on their site.
EZ> Suddenly we are all sure this will be seemingly cool for editing C/C++
EZ> etc., but still insist that the UI feature should look and feel the
EZ> same, without even trying.  Does this make a lot of sense?

I agree with you that we shouldn't mimic things others have implemented,
that's not traditionally where Emacs shines.

I also think a way to see and edit information inline without the
distraction of context-switching is clearly useful.  See `eldoc-mode'
for instance, and as others have mentioned, tooltips.

Finally, I clearly remember the loooooong discussions about Eclipse
perspectives.  They clearly didn't fit Emacs' model, in the end, judging
by the lack of interest.  That IMO was a case of the featuritis chasimus
that concerns you, and I certainly hope imitating Brackets is not
another.

Ted