On 21/3/2006, at 2:57, Trevor Harmon wrote:
[...] I think they should be shorter. For instance, is having "in Document" as part of the name really necessary?
It is, yes. Because if you have a selection, it is “Remove Unprintable Characters in Selection”.
Another example: "Convert Spaces to Tabs (Estimating Indent)" That's quite a mouthful. Why not just "Entab"?
Because personally I had no idea what Entab or Zap Gremlens meant, before BBEdit users told me (and I would think Entab would be to add one tab, e.g. increase indent).
The goal with TextMate’s menu labeling is not verbosity, but it is non-ambiguity. There is a lot of commands, so it is a priority that the names spell out what the commands do. And if you try to rename all the commands to shorter names, I think you will find this may work for only very few of them, causing asymmetry in the naming system.