RE: Menu commands to M-x history?

[Drew Adams]

I said:

> I don't disagree with much of what you wrote. Perhaps it 
> would have been better for me not to mention my experience
> and partial support of adding menu items. That probably
> clouded the issue as you would like to see it discussed.
> 
> Look at the bright side ;-): there wasn't much in the way of 
> solid argument against the idea of adding menu items for M-x
> history. My arguments were only wrt default vs on-demand. 

FWIW, I've changed my mind about this, based on playing with it a bit.

I agree now with Lennart that it would generally be good to have menu-item
commands added to `extended-command-history' - not just available on demand via
some minibuffer key.

It would also be good to have a user option to control this feature (i.e.,
whether menu-item commands are recorded in the history). I think the use of an
option should accommodate those who disagree with the feature.

For users who rarely use a menu, no behavior change would be visible. Those who
use menus a lot would benefit by (a) learning the corresponding commands and (b)
having recall available, as well as completion (against the history list).

Remember, there is no other means for reinvoking a menu item - no way to refresh
your memory or quickly find again that (possibly deep) menu item that you used
30 minutes ago. This handicaps menu users unnecessarily. And that probably
includes many newbies (and even oldbies exploring parts of Emacs that are new to
them).

Adding commands invoked as menu-items to the command history will act as a
bridge between menu use and minibuffer use. I would even vote for having this
history addition be turned on by default.

Few participated in the previous discussion. WDOT?