A new filter-based customization interface

A new filter-based customization interface

[Moakt Temporary Email]

Hi everyone,

I am proposing a new beginner-friendly customization interface, which would make emacs more attractive for newcomers, be it actual developers, future developers to be, and even non-developers (writers, students, professors, teachers, etc.), and any lambda person having interest in using emacs.

I added a screenshot of what such an interface might look like (which is better than words).
https://justpaste.it/fdau4.

The main idea of this customization interface is to help users quickly and easily customize emacs for the actual task(s) they need, by providing familiar filters so they can quickly select and access the relevant customizations.

For example, they can select “irc”, “ide”, “agenda”, “completion”, “version control”, “c++”, etc, to filter the customizations relevant to use emacs as an IRC client, IDE, etc.

Today this not possible, and would require new users days and weeks to configure emacs, which would discourage and thus discard lot of them from using emacs.

Do you think this is something achievable in emacs ?
Do you think the actual customization interface can be enhanced to include these changes ? Or should it be a new separate interface ?

I have added all the details about this idea here:
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2024-12/msg00174.html
(It is too long to read, that is why I am sending this separate message).

Thank you

Re: A new filter-based customization interface

[Philip Kaludercic]

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Moakt Temporary Email <emacs-devel-proposal@drmail.in> writes:

> Hi everyone,
>
> I am proposing a new beginner-friendly customization interface, which
> would make emacs more attractive for newcomers, be it actual
> developers, future developers to be, and even non-developers (writers,
> students, professors, teachers, etc.), and any lambda person having
> interest in using emacs.
>
> I added a screenshot of what such an interface might look like (which is better than words).
> https://justpaste.it/fdau4.

As this site is rather slow, here is the same image attached to this
message:


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[-- Attachment #3: Type: text/plain, Size: 1701 bytes --]


> The main idea of this customization interface is to help users quickly
> and easily customize emacs for the actual task(s) they need, by
> providing familiar filters so they can quickly select and access the
> relevant customizations.
>
> For example, they can select “irc”, “ide”, “agenda”, “completion”,
> “version control”, “c++”, etc, to filter the customizations relevant
> to use emacs as an IRC client, IDE, etc.

My question is how this is worse or better than having some kind of
attributes added to user options and then having a
`customise-group'-like command that presents all suggested "irc", "ide",
"agenda", ... options.

But generally speaking, it seems that beginners are not interested in
being overburdened with all the things they can decide on (even if this
is categorised), but rather to have as many thing as possible to DTRT OOTB.

> Today this not possible, and would require new users days and weeks to configure emacs, which would discourage and thus discard lot of them from using emacs.
>
> Do you think this is something achievable in emacs ?
> Do you think the actual customization interface can be enhanced to include these changes ? Or should it be a new separate interface ?

I tend to feel that it would be better to have a separate UI with fewer
choices (beginners are probably not /that/ interested in the differences
between saving something for this session or permanently, I'd think?).

> I have added all the details about this idea here:
> https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2024-12/msg00174.html
> (It is too long to read, that is why I am sending this separate message).
>
> Thank you