Dmitry Gutov <dgutov@yandex.ru> writes:
I mean, look at the toolbar that happens when you "emacs -Q": You get an
Emacs with a scratch buffer... with a "Save" icon. In a buffer that
can't be saved. That's how much attention we've spent on toolbars in
two decades.
Well, it actually can be saved, as soon as you type something (C-x C-s
works), and it's one of the real usage patterns. The button doesn't
indicate that, though.
Yeah, the save button stays grayed out and you can't click it, which I
take to be an indication that this toolbar hasn't gotten a lot of love.
Maybe you're right. I checked back, and most contemporary text editors
don't have a toolbar like we do.
Atom/Sublime/VS Code don't have this kind of editor toolbar. IDEA only
has specialized toolbars for, like, debugging.
The recent versions of Kate (KDE editor) also seem to have removed
it. GNOME Builder only has a small number of buttons, and they are on
the title bar. Geany still has a toolbar, though.
Even MS Word, while it has a toolbar for certain features, has moved
the basic edit buttons to the window titlebar and made them pretty
small.
I think we should consider setting some standards for what should be in
a toolbar, and normal editing commands shouldn't be there. That is, a
toolbar should be for things that people want to click a lot, like
"pause" in a media player, or navigation commands like "prev/next" in
*Help*.