Re: Representation of the Emacs userbase on emacs-devel

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> Cc: philipk@posteo.net, rms@gnu.org, john@yates-sheets.org,
>  danflscr@gmail.com, monnier@iro.umontreal.ca, emacs-devel@gnu.org
> From: Dmitry Gutov <dgutov@yandex.ru>
> Date: Fri, 3 Sep 2021 15:11:44 +0300
> 
> On 03.09.2021 14:19, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> 
> >> Again you try to change any discussion of a change into an "addition".
> >> Something that wouldn't change anything in the default behavior.
> > 
> > Because I think that's a much better way forward, in the long run.
> > But if you want to insist on changing the defaults without the opt-in
> > changes first, I guess we will be having this discussion many times in
> > the future.
> 
> That is just side-stepping the question.

Which question?

We are, I hope, interested mainly in making Emacs evolve and adapt to
the changing times and preferences.  I consider the way of introducing
changes as optional first to be a better way towards that goal,
including the goal to change the defaults.  And I explained in so many
words why and how.  How is that side-stepping the issue at hand?

> > You tried convincing in this before, and you failed.
> 
> That discussion is a great example of the problems I wrote about in this 
> thread: we don't pay any attention to polls, hard statistics, articles 
> and user posts (of which I produced plenty).
> 
> A few folks say "I don't like", and that's the end of it.

Show me a project where things are different, where the lead
developers cannot say "I don't like" (with arguments, which you forget
to mention, or prefer to dismiss or disregard, but they are still
there), and that's it.  This is how Free Software projects are being
developed, at least IME.  Emacs is not an outlier, it's right there in
the mainstream.

> > IME, at least on
> > my daytime job, source code produced by people these days with popular
> > IDEs (not Emacs) includes TABs.
> 
> Does it include tabs in the same fashion as what is produced by Emacs? 
> Which actually mixes tabs and spaces.

Why does it matter?  If we'd make the default use only TABs, would you
agree then?

> > So at least my experience disagrees
> > with yours.  Which might explain why this change didn't happen.
> 
> I wasn't just listing my experience.

Neither was I.  Anyone who'd look at the output of those IDEs will see
it, you don't need my "experience" to do that.  It's a fact.

> > Someone suggested to have "themes" in Emacs which could change the
> > defaults of many settings in one simple command.  Why not invest the
> > energy we waste in these endless discussions in making that happen?
> > It at least would make the changes easier for newbies, if nothing
> > else.
> 
> A few reasons. I don't really want to make Emacs more complex than it 
> is. I usually strive to make the existing workflows simpler. There are 
> only so many hours in a day.
> 
> Further: what kind of theme would include indent-tabs-mode set to nil? A 
> theme called 'Sane Defaults'?

Then I guess you won't be working on this any time soon.  Which is
perfectly okay; I hope someone else will.

> The users would need to find out about it somehow and then enable 
> anyway, so what would make it different from having a custom option 
> called indent-tabs-mode, which we have already?

The difference is that you need to choose among a small number of
themes, instead of among many dozens of individual options.  It makes
the customization simpler.