Richard M. Stallman wrote:
2) Do not show the message "Prompt is read-only" when Inviolable is on.
It is just disturbing and unexpected in my opinion. It is simply the
usual behavior for most applications that you are not able to delete the
prompt.
The command delete-backward-char is going to fail because the text is
read-only. What exactly do you suggest that it do?
I would just like the point to stop where it is then.
This is how it normally works in other programs. I guess the problem we
have with this here comes from the nature and history of Emacs. In a
buffer with an input widget (like Custom buffers sometimes have) a
message seems useful. In that case the boundary between the field and
the area outside is a more hard to grasp in the beginning since you
might expect Emacs to behave like other applications for such a page.
The message is also shown in a not disturbing place - in the message
area. Many applications use an area at the bottom for messages so it is
not unexpected.
In a Custom buffer colors are also used to mark the input fields. This
is rather easily recognized by most users I believe since this too is
common. It can be shown more clearly than now, an inset frame has been
standard long, but for the moment I think it is as good as it can be.
(Maybe the colors could be different though. Gray most often is a symbol
for text that can not be changed. In the Custom buffers this has been
reversed. I would have choosen white for the editable fields and another
color for the rest, probably not all gray. Preferable would in my
opinion be the color the user have selected for the menubar, ie a system
color.)
In the minibuffer there is by default (emacs -Q) no color that tells
where the prompt ends. A colored background to the prompt could in my
opinion be useful and I would suggest that it is on by default. In the
minibuffer too the color symbols other states than in most other
applications. Normally a message area is in the same color as the
menubar. Input fields are most often white. Using the color symbolic
that comes with the OS would to me make most sense. In this case that
would mean that the prompt area would be in the color of the menu bar
and the input area would be white. When there is no input area active
the whole minibuffer window would have the color of the menubar.
Using a message for such a common case in the minibuffer is just
disturbing and more so since it prints the message over the prompt (as I
explained in an earlier message).
Such things would of course be customizeable. I do not know if the
system colors currently can be used on different platforms. On text only
systems I guess something similar could be done.
All my points above (in this long message, sorry) are geared towards
making things less surprising for a beginner. I myself must have very
good reasons to use any application that does not follow OS guidelines.
I do use Gimp for example but I am highly irritated by its "creative"
ways of doing very common things sometimes. (Even though I think very
much very good work has been done to create the program itself.) I often
even do not know if the strange GUI behaviour I see is by intention or
if it is a bug.
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