Re: Emacs Survey: Toolbars

[Christopher Dimech]

> Sent: Wednesday, December 16, 2020 at 6:34 AM
> From: "Richard Stallman" <rms@gnu.org>
> To: "Lars Ingebrigtsen" <larsi@gnus.org>
> Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org
> Subject: Re: Emacs Survey: Toolbars
>
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>
>   > 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?
>
> The people who responded to that survey are certainly not representative
> of all users.  They were selected for being users of certain web sites.
>
> That doesn't imply that most users want toolbars.  Maybe hardly anyone
> wants toolbars.
>
> So here's an idea.  We could make Emacs display, where the toolbar
> would have been, a question:
>
>    Would you like a toolbar here or not?   Yes   No
>
> If you click Yes, that customizes to permanently turn on the toolbar.
> If you click No, that customizes to permanently turn off the toolbar.
>
> Each one could offer to click on a web page where you could
> register your preference.  That way we would get a complete sample.

Toolbar icons are the equivalent to keybindings for those who use the
mouse.  Rather than arguing about having a toolbar or not, allow the
user to introduce a toolbar icon and associate with it a specific command.

> --
> Dr Richard Stallman
> Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
> Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
> Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)