Re: Making Emacs more friendly to newcomers

[조성빈 <pcr910303@icloud.com>]

Po Lu <luangruo@yahoo.com> 작성:

> Sébastien Gendre <seb@k-7.ch> writes:
>
>
>> Let's see some use-cases:
>> - Bob: A newcomer, who just discover Emacs. He search somthing who is
>>   visually modern, with all features he need to start writing code in
>>   most popular languages: Code colouration, auto-completion, code
>>   navigation, code documentation and functions/methods signature
>>   automatically shown, code errors/warnings signalling, REPL
>>   integration, snippets, strong GIT integration, etc. He also want to
>>   use basic features without the need to read a tutorial. Just install
>>   and go. But he is ok to read some tuto or manuals for advanced
>>   features. If we ask him question(s) about what to enable or not, he
>>   probably cannot respond (or thing he cannot). For him, Emacs need to
>>   be the most out of the box possible.
>> - Alice: A long time user. She got a personal Emacs configuration she
>>   had perfected over the years. She chose herself what system is used
>>   to show function completion, which code parser is used for her daily
>>   used languages. She add some packages to integrate with special
>>   tools used at her work. Emacs is her home and office: She use it as
>>   much for her personal project than for her work. She also made a
>>   personal workflow with org-mode and write some personal Elisp
>>   functions and advices. She forge the tools to her need. She do not
>>   want to have an update of Emacs who break her configuration, her
>>   workflow or her muscle memory.
>> - Mei: She simply want to use SpaceEmacs. She need to be sure
>>   SpaceEmacs would work out of the box and be able to override all
>>   defaults Emacs configuration. So SpaceEmacs developers need a way to
>>   doing their work without the need to deactivate a hundred of default
>>   features one after another and risk to forget one. This possibility
>>   should be well documented. As the need of Mei is covered by
>>   SpaceEmacs, she doesn't have special request about Emacs except make
>>   it easy to use SpaceEmacs.
>> - Roberto: He work on a pre-configuration of Emacs, similar to
>>   SpaceEmacs. He need a simple and documented way to deactivate all
>>   default configurations that would make is work difficult. If
>>   possible, in one move. And, of course, he need to know what is
>>   deactivated so he can choose wisely what to enable and what to not.
>
> You have summed up the use-cases rather well.  Thanks.
>
>> For these 4 use-cases, we can simply provide 2 flavors of Emacs:
>> - Emacs: With all the 2020 features, a modern interface, all needed
>>   modern features to start coding with most popular languages and easy
>>   to use for basic usages
>> - Emacs Vanilla: All the new features are still there, but deactivate
>>   to not break anything
>> And these 2 flavors can be in the same text editor: For switch from a
>> flavor to another, simply enable the global-minor-mode `vanilla-mode`.
>> And if Emacs detect, after an update or a first start, an already
>> existing configuration that it could break because of some features:
>> Emacs simply activate `vanilla-mode` automatically.
>
> I'm afraid it's not that simple.  I don't think we need any radical
> changes in Emacs to be turned on by default, but maybe something like a
> set-up wizard or "New to Emacs? Click here" would be useful.

I can’t understand why you’re so opposed to changing defaults. Defaults
matter, and I think that users who are already accustomed to Emacs will
have an easier time changing options. (Like adding `(vanilla-mode 1)`
to init.el.)

>> - Alice update Emacs. When she restart it, Emacs detect an already
>>   existing configuration that it could break by enabling some
>>   features. So, Emacs simply enable `vanilla-mode` and add it to the
>>   `init.el`. Emacs also show a message to Alice: "Emacs detected that
>>   you have some personal configuration, so it active Vanilla-mode to
>>   avoid breaking your configuration. Vanilla-mode deactivate some
>>   features that you can re-enable manually.". This message is
>>   accompanied by a clickable link to the documentation about the
>>   `vanilla-mode` to see what it does in the details and what is
>>   deactivate.
>
> I'm not sure whether Emacs can reliably detect updates or not.

Adding a variable that makes Emacs warn if it’s version number is
different from its value might work.

> IIRC,
> there was a discussion a while back that said no.  Plus, as I've
> previously mentioned, I don't think Emacs should adopt any drastic
> changes as the default configuration, but instead make the changes
> easily discoverable.

The features that are best discoverable are the ones that are default.

> (or at least until all of us old farts have had
> another decade or 2 to adjust).

Defaults have to change for experienced users to adjust. And for them,
adjusting is an easy task, not something that takes a decade.