Subject: Re: bug#57113: 29.0.50; Confusing icon customization interface

From: Po Lu <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 06 Nov 2023 21:00:53 +0800

Mauro Aranda <[email-masked]> writes:

> I tried to improve the tags for the custom-icon widget.  See the
> attached patch.
>
> I'm willing to work on this, so any feedback is appreaciated. Thanks.

Thanks.  I cannot devote any time to this problem, so please feel at
liberty to abound in your own sense.

I think that a handful of adjustments to the widget's layout won't
address the issues I raised, since they are intrinsic to the "array of
buttons and text fields" paradigm which most Customize widgets follow.

This paradigm befits customizing user options, which must frequently be
represented by individual widgets controlling nested data structures;
with icons, which are merely small symbols representing a capacity or
event, there is no analogous justification for such undue complexity.

The raison d'etre for Easy Customization is to provide an abstract and
unambiguous interface for the user to customize Emacs to his heart's
content--in the case of icons, it should provide a mechanism for
replacing the symbol displayed in one or two clicks and nothing beyond
that.