Re: Emacs Survey: Toolbars

[Christopher Dimech]

> Sent: Tuesday, December 15, 2020 at 5:26 PM
> From: "Eli Zaretskii" <eliz@gnu.org>
> To: "Lars Ingebrigtsen" <larsi@gnus.org>
> Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org
> Subject: Re: Emacs Survey: Toolbars
>
> > From: Lars Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org>
> > Date: Tue, 15 Dec 2020 06:30:20 +0100
> >
> > Of 7.3K respondents, 5K disable toolbars, which is more than two
> > thirds.  So perhaps toolbars should default to off?  I know toolbars
> > were all the rage in the 90s, but that's apparently not the case now.
> >
> > Opinions?
>
> If we want to appear by default more like other GUI apps out there,
> then we should bite the bullet and show some widget that allows to
> toggle on/off those parts of the UI (tool bar, menu bar, scroll bars,
> etc.), like they do.
>
> IOW, turning off the tool bar by default and leaving the users with
> "M-x tool-bar-mode" to turn it on is IMO a step back in usability
> which will leave us with a poorer UI.

I fully agree with Eli Zaretskii.  We have really started on very bad
ideas.  Debating about disabling or enabling a toolbar (in general, the
question was about disabling graphical tools, completely antithetical to
modernisation) is of no real value.