Subject: Re: bug#12635: A usability issue with the save dialog box

From: Juri Linkov <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 13 Oct 2012 19:05:01 +0300

> Please let me know if I can help improve Emacs.

The most user-friendly UI would tell the user what pressing the button
will do exactly.  So instead of buttons "Yes"/"No", it would display
more explicit text in buttons: "Save"/"Don't save" or "Save"/"Discard".

OTOH, Emacs is special in this regard that actions in the dialog box
have their counterparts in the non-GUI version where "y" and "n" are keys
to save or skip the buffer.  With the goal to maintain compatibility
between these two versions, the GUI version could provide accelerator keys
in the button text like "_Y_es" and "_N_o".

But in case when these versions will diverge from each other,
and also for the final question

  Modified buffers exist; exit anyway?

still more explicit "Yes, discard changes"/"No, cancel" or
"Yes, close without saving"/"No, cancel" would be better.

"Don't quit" to cancel the dialog is very necessary, yes,
but a link in a dialog box a quite non-standard element.
Much simpler would be to just add the button "Cancel".

Removing the option "View This Buffer" could be accompanied with
displaying the buffer in question unconditionally (this suggestion
pertains to the non-GUI version as well).

Regarding the multi-file operation, some applications solve this problem
by displaying a list of all unsaved files to help the user decide what
to do with all of them.

Emacs already does the same for running processes by displaying their list
and asking a simple question:

  Active processes exist; kill them and exit anyway? "Yes"/"No"

I wonder why not to do the same for unsaved buffers?