CEDET on menu bar

[Chong Yidong]

Now that the dust has mostly settled on the CEDET merge, I'd like to
address the issue of entering CEDET via the menu-bar.

There are two possibilities: putting CEDET in the Options menu or
putting it in the Tools menu.

Conceptually, it would be cleaner to put CEDET in the Tools menu,
alongside the other development-related commands like "compile", "gdb",
etc.

However, unlike the other items in the Tools menu, which are one-off
commands, Semantic and EDE are minor modes.  They can be toggled, just
like the items in the Options menu.  It would also be nice to be able to
use the "Save Options" menu item to enable Semantic and EDE across
sessions.

What do people think?

[Lennart Borgman (gmail)]

On Sun, Oct 25, 2009 at 10:01 PM, Chong Yidong <cyd@...> wrote:

> Now that the dust has mostly settled on the CEDET merge, I'd like to
> address the issue of entering CEDET via the menu-bar.
>
> There are two possibilities: putting CEDET in the Options menu or
> putting it in the Tools menu.
>
> Conceptually, it would be cleaner to put CEDET in the Tools menu,
> alongside the other development-related commands like "compile", "gdb",
> etc.
>
> However, unlike the other items in the Tools menu, which are one-off
> commands, Semantic and EDE are minor modes.  They can be toggled, just
> like the items in the Options menu.  It would also be nice to be able to
> use the "Save Options" menu item to enable Semantic and EDE across
> sessions.
>
> What do people think?

I think there should be a top-level menu called "Minor Modes" or
something similar.

That would be very helpful in other cases too. I am not sure what
changes are needed to move most minor modes under this top-level menu.
Perhaps it can be done automatically in some cases, maybe by modifying
define-minor-mode.

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Chong Yidong <cyd@...>
> Date: Sun, 25 Oct 2009 17:01:24 -0400
>
> There are two possibilities: putting CEDET in the Options menu or
> putting it in the Tools menu.

Tools.

> However, unlike the other items in the Tools menu, which are one-off
> commands, Semantic and EDE are minor modes.

Tools->Debugger (GDB) is not a one-off command.  Tools->Compare (Ediff)
isn't, either.

Rather than looking at EDE as a minor mode, look at it as turning on
an IDE.

[Miles Bader-2]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@...> writes:
> Tools->Debugger (GDB) is not a one-off command.  Tools->Compare (Ediff)
> isn't, either.

Well, they are, kinda -- they create a buffer/buffers, and the state is
associated with that buffer.  The CEDET stuff (AFAIK), just frobs global
state which affects all subsequent Emacs operation.

-Miles

--
Un-American, adj. Wicked, intolerable, heathenish.

[Stefan Monnier]

> However, unlike the other items in the Tools menu, which are one-off
> commands, Semantic and EDE are minor modes.  They can be toggled, just
> like the items in the Options menu.  It would also be nice to be able to
> use the "Save Options" menu item to enable Semantic and EDE across
> sessions.

Custom-saving sounds good but only if it is able to enable CEDET
features for some modes but not all.


        Stefan

[Chong Yidong]

> Conceptually, it would be cleaner to put CEDET in the Tools menu,
> alongside the other development-related commands like "compile", "gdb",
> etc.
>
> However, unlike the other items in the Tools menu, which are one-off
> commands, Semantic and EDE are minor modes.  They can be toggled, just
> like the items in the Options menu.  It would also be nice to be able to
> use the "Save Options" menu item to enable Semantic and EDE across
> sessions.

I've added the CEDET items to the Tools menu.  (It appears that there is
already one toggle in the Tool menu: the flyspell menu item under
Tools->Spell Checking.)

It would be nice if "Save Options" could save these entries, but that
may be confusing since they are not under the Options menu.

[Lennart Borgman (gmail)]

On Sat, Oct 31, 2009 at 7:10 PM, Chong Yidong <cyd@...> wrote:

>> Conceptually, it would be cleaner to put CEDET in the Tools menu,
>> alongside the other development-related commands like "compile", "gdb",
>> etc.
>>
>> However, unlike the other items in the Tools menu, which are one-off
>> commands, Semantic and EDE are minor modes.  They can be toggled, just
>> like the items in the Options menu.  It would also be nice to be able to
>> use the "Save Options" menu item to enable Semantic and EDE across
>> sessions.
>
> I've added the CEDET items to the Tools menu.  (It appears that there is
> already one toggle in the Tool menu: the flyspell menu item under
> Tools->Spell Checking.)
>
> It would be nice if "Save Options" could save these entries, but that
> may be confusing since they are not under the Options menu.

I am repeating myself: I think the "Save Options" should be changed to
something like "Save Customized Options" (or something better, I have
forgotten my previous attempts to get some agreement on this so I
can't repeat myself good enought today...).

[Miles Bader-2]

Chong Yidong <cyd@...> writes:
> It would be nice if "Save Options" could save these entries, but that
> may be confusing since they are not under the Options menu.

Could you duplicate them, so they have an entry in the Tools menu, and
also an entry in something under Options (e.g., "Options > Tools > ..."
or something)?

-Miles

--
People who are more than casually interested in computers should have at
least some idea of what the underlying hardware is like.  Otherwise the
programs they write will be pretty weird.  -- Donald Knuth

[Lennart Borgman (gmail)]

On Mon, Nov 2, 2009 at 8:42 AM, Miles Bader <miles@...> wrote:
> Chong Yidong <cyd@...> writes:
>> It would be nice if "Save Options" could save these entries, but that
>> may be confusing since they are not under the Options menu.
>
> Could you duplicate them, so they have an entry in the Tools menu, and
> also an entry in something under Options (e.g., "Options > Tools > ..."
> or something)?

Is not that unnecessary and unclear? Isn't it better to avoid the
confusion and just use customize-save-customized for the "Save
Options" entry?