Re: delete-selection-mode as default (WAS: Some developement questions)

[Ergus <spacibba@aol.com>]

On Sun, Sep 09, 2018 at 01:13:16PM +0000, Alan Mackenzie wrote:
>Hello, Eli.
>
>On Sat, Sep 08, 2018 at 12:26:43 +0300, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
>> > Date: Sat, 08 Sep 2018 14:03:46 +0530
>> > CC: emacs-devel@gnu.org
>> > From: Bingo <right.ho@gmail.com>
>
>> > 1. When Emacs first starts, see if there is an init file. Various
>> > modern software do so, so we would be on solid ground there.
>
>> > 2. If so, trust the user that he would have set delete-selection-mode
>> > as required.
>
>> I'm not sure this is a valid assumption.  A user could have
>> delete-selection-mode not turned on because she had no idea such a
>> thing existed in Emacs.
>
>> >  This would avoid stepping on the toes of power users : which form
>> >  the majority of Emacs users.
>
>> Please note that veteran users only care about defaults when they need
>> to use Emacs on someone else's machine, or when logged on as some other
>> user (like root or su).
>
>A third situation, in which at least one veteran user (me) cares is when
>testing a bug fix with emacs -Q.  In such cases, I can get fairly
>irritated by, e.g., transient-mark-mode, and would get even more
>irritated were delete-selection-mode to be enabled by default.
>
>-- 
>Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).
>

I understand this. But then I only see 2 possible solutions:

1) Keep emacs defaults only for experienced users, so forget about getting new users and let it die slowly.

2) Start thinking in the new generations who will inherit emacs but already have a standard idea of how editors should behave; very different of the emacs defaults.

As a good consensus (and we are again where this thread started) is the
option to make an initial assistant (like the one in spacemacs but maybe
more complete) which can provide a bunch of options to the user to
set/unset them (with some information or more options depending of the
user (it can start with standard, advanced, minimal like many other
programs)). And add this configuration as the init file (if there was
not one) or as an extra file that cannot be skipped with -Q but with
another option that could be added.

This is maybe a bit more complicated to implement, but it can satisfy both cases somehow.

There is a point where old projects need to adapt themselves to the
running times, not only importing functionalities, but also updating
functionalities they already have in order to improve them. But we need
to think in the normal users which are majority in any project.