Subject: bug#15230: 24.3; Inconsistency in Tools menu

From: Stefan Monnier <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 13 Sep 2013 01:05:59 -0400

> There is "Games" position in "Tools" menu.
> I'm not sure if it should belong to this menu.

I see your point, but I'm not sure where else to put it.

> Another problem is that in "Tools" menu there are toggle type buttons
> such as:

> - Project Support (EDE)
> - Source Code Parsers (Semantic)

> These options are not "tools".  They do nothing functional.  They are
> just turning some features on and off but have no immediate
> functional meaning.

> Another problem is that we have more similar options to add there and
> this could turn into an extensible and almost unlimited list of
> external features available to turn on and off.

I guess we could move them to Options, but the toggles in Options tend
to be of a different nature (basically UI preferences), whereas the EDE and
Semantic are really toggles to turn on some tool, simply because those
tools aren't quite tuned enough yet to always "just work", so turning
them on unconditionally would lead to complaints.

> We could add positions such as:
> - Code Browser

Not sure what package/function/feature that would refer to.

> - Code Snippets

These are usually enabled already.

> - Syntax Checking

You mean something like flymake?  This definitely falls in the same camp
as EDE/Semantic, since it should also ideally be enabled by default, but
there again, it's not polished/robust enough for that.

> Then we will get a long and hard to navigate list of toggle buttons which
> belong to "Options" menu rather than to "Tools".

The Options menu is indeed problematic since Emacs has so many options:
we can only keep in it a few options we consider to benefit from such
a position (e.g. to make them easier to find for newcomers, or to make
them easier to toggle at runtime).

> Another solution is to move this list to submenu.
> For example:
> "Tools" -> "Features >> "

That sounds like a good idea.  Tho it would have the downside that it
would somewhat hide those features.

        Stefan