Re: Does anyone use menus?

I think commands fall into three categories:
- ones you use so frequently that your fingers just "know" -- there's no
point in putting these in menus.
- ones you use so rarely that they would clutter the menus without
providing real value.
- the small group in the middle that you use often enough to warrant a
place in the front of your consciousness, but not so frequently that you
can remember them - a function the menu provides for you.

Similarly, there are three kinds of users:
- folks who live in the IDE and think anything other than keystrokes and an
occasional typed command are for wimps.
- folks who recognize the IDE's power and usefulness in their environment,
so they use it instead of (say) notepad, and can use a bit of help (menus)
along the way, for the less familiar commands.
- folks who hate computers, their job, and everything having to do with
their job, but have been told to use emacs (e.g., by their boss). They need
menus to get anything done. (We don't need menus for them, per se; we need
menus for the boss who has to work with these people  :-)

I think menus are a subtle, relatively unintrusive way to provide enormous
help for those of us in the middle... I would keep them...
On the other hand, if they are movable and dockable, then the user could
make any choice desired (by default, they should show, in my opinion).

Also, FWIW:
Keys and menus are already related -- if you show a menu item that has a
related keystroke, the keystroke appears also.

Perhaps it is worth considering tieing Help to menus. For example, if a
person asks for help with "Upper casing", when showing the help, include a
"button" called "Add to Edit menu".
Similarly, if they ask for help with write region, provide button "Add to
File menu". That way, the user can receive a little help for a while until
they are comfortable getting the keystroke...

Caveat: I am not a big menu user, so I don't know if this is truly useful,
or not. I don't know under what circumstances things should eventually be
removed from menus. However, from looking over the shoulders of others, I
am guessing that this kind of thing could be very useful in any product
that allows a commandline input (e.g., M-x) because there are so many
commands that they are not all on menus.




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