Subject: Re: bug#64871: 30.0.50; [FR] Add command and menu item to open user init file

From: Eli Zaretskii <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 27 Jul 2023 08:36:17 +0300

> Cc: [email-masked]
> Date: Thu, 27 Jul 2023 09:09:24 +0800
> From:  Po Lu via "Bug reports for GNU Emacs,
>  the Swiss army knife of text editors" <[email-masked]>
> 
> Ihor Radchenko <[email-masked]> writes:
> 
> > The command should obviously be available via M-x and maybe also via
> > menu
> 
> The global menu bar is already overflowing, so let's not add any more
> items to the Edit, Options, Buffers or Tools menus.

Before concluding that this suggestion will cause trouble to the
over-crowded menu bar, we should talk about where this new items might
be placed.  If we place it in an existing sub-menu, then the problems
it will cause might not be that grave.  For example, how about the
Options->Customize Emacs sub-menu?

> The Emacs manual holds a description of the location of user
> initialization files.

In a 55-line subsection, plus another 54-line section in the
Appendices that describes the Windows-specific quirks!

> > and toolbar.
> 
> No!
> 
> Adding that item to the tool bar would increase its (limited) size and
> defeat its purpose of holding frequently used editing operations,
> relegating its role to that of a dumping ground for miscellany.

To be fair, the tool bar still has some free space on it.  But I
actually wonder about something else: what other applications have a
tool-bar button to access the init file, or even just the
customization menu?