From xemacs-m  Wed Feb 12 08:49:29 1997
Received: from newman (root@newman.aventail.com [38.225.141.10])
	by xemacs.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id IAA29133
	for <xemacs-beta@xemacs.org>; Wed, 12 Feb 1997 08:49:27 -0600 (CST)
Received: from kramer.in.aventail.com.aventail.com (wmperry@kramer [192.168.1.12]) by newman (8.6.12/8.6.9) with SMTP id GAA04399; Wed, 12 Feb 1997 06:47:28 -0800
Date: Wed, 12 Feb 1997 06:47:28 -0800
Message-Id: <199702121447.GAA04399@newman>
From: "William M. Perry" <wmperry@aventail.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
To: Jeff Miller <jmiller@bay1.bayserve.net>
Cc: beta-list <xemacs-beta@xemacs.org>
Subject: Re: menus vs. custom (was: grr, need help on menus.)
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SUN.3.95.970212005255.27642C-100000@bay1.bayserve.net>
References: <QQccnj07791.199702120458@crystal.WonderWorks.COM>
	<Pine.SUN.3.95.970212005255.27642C-100000@bay1.bayserve.net>
Errors-to: wmperry@aventail.com
Reply-to: wmperry@aventail.com
X-Face: O~Rn;(l][/-o1sALg4A@xpE:9-"'IR[%;,,!m7</SYF`{vYQ(&RI1&EiH[FvT;J}@f!4kfz
 x_!Y#=y{Uuj9GvUi=cPuajQ(Z42R[wE@{G,sn$qGr5g/wnb*"*ktI+,CD}1Z'wxrM2ag-r0p5I6\nA
 [WJopW_J.WY;

Jeff Miller writes:
>
>On Tue, 11 Feb 1997, Kyle Jones wrote:
>
>> I haven't yet looked closely at custom.el yet, but one thing it
>> has in its favor as far as I'm concerned is that it is not menu
>> based.  Navigating menus and submenus and subsubmenus is tedious
>> and difficult.  Using a frame with click buttons, knobs and so
>> forth is much easier to deal with.  If custom.el didn't already
>> exist I would have written something like it for VM anyway.
>
>I guess it also has the plus that some using xemacs -nw could still do
>configuration.  right?

  Exactly.

>> Menus are good for options that you might want to change often and
>> immediately.  But for large swamps of preferences, the menus
>> become unwieldy.
>
>I would tend to agree here. 
>
>I just would hate to see the Options menu thrown out altogether.  When it
>got added, I thought it was one of the best additions I had seen in
>awhile.  Custom may be the way to go in the future, but right now I'm not
>convined.  It just doesn't feel intuitive to me yet.
>
>At least the stuff under the XEmacs Help menu doesn't.  Is the something
>more "custom" ized?  Wasn't w3?  Or am I confused as usual? :-)

  GNUS is customized.  Emacs-W3 uses some widgets to create its own
preferences 'panel', ala netscape 1.x, with a dropdown box to select
categories, and the main chunk of the window changes its contents based
upon which panel is selected.  No custom* stuff used, just widget*

-Bill P.

