From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.io!.POSTED.blaine.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Eli Zaretskii Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: Gather a list of confusions beginner tend to have Date: Fri, 11 Sep 2020 09:45:36 +0300 Message-ID: <83y2lghkvj.fsf@gnu.org> References: <875z8ortot.fsf@gkayaalp.com> <83lfhjkq0r.fsf@gnu.org> <8620B5CD-CA92-46BF-80A8-DBE7052F4CA6@gmail.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Injection-Info: ciao.gmane.io; posting-host="blaine.gmane.org:116.202.254.214"; logging-data="1457"; mail-complaints-to="usenet@ciao.gmane.io" Cc: self@gkayaalp.com, emacs-devel@gnu.org To: Yuan Fu Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane-mx.org@gnu.org Fri Sep 11 08:46:46 2020 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane-mx.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([209.51.188.17]) by ciao.gmane.io with esmtps (TLS1.2:ECDHE_RSA_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:256) (Exim 4.92) (envelope-from ) id 1kGcpY-0000FW-Fh for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane-mx.org; Fri, 11 Sep 2020 08:46:44 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:42102 helo=lists1p.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1kGcpX-0000Mu-Fd for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane-mx.org; Fri, 11 Sep 2020 02:46:43 -0400 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:470:142:3::10]:37444) by lists.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS1.2:ECDHE_RSA_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:256) (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1kGcoR-0008IG-CJ for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Fri, 11 Sep 2020 02:45:35 -0400 Original-Received: from fencepost.gnu.org ([2001:470:142:3::e]:47956) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1kGcoQ-0004Lg-1Q; Fri, 11 Sep 2020 02:45:34 -0400 Original-Received: from [176.228.60.248] (port=3928 helo=home-c4e4a596f7) by fencepost.gnu.org with esmtpsa (TLS1.2:RSA_AES_256_CBC_SHA1:256) (Exim 4.82) (envelope-from ) id 1kGcoO-000653-1r; Fri, 11 Sep 2020 02:45:33 -0400 In-Reply-To: <8620B5CD-CA92-46BF-80A8-DBE7052F4CA6@gmail.com> (message from Yuan Fu on Thu, 10 Sep 2020 19:20:34 -0400) X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.23 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane-mx.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: "Emacs-devel" Xref: news.gmane.io gmane.emacs.devel:255101 Archived-At: > From: Yuan Fu > Date: Thu, 10 Sep 2020 19:20:34 -0400 > Cc: Göktuğ Kayaalp , > emacs-devel > > > I don't think this scales. Emacs has thousands of options, I'm > > guessing hundreds of them are important for the audience you have in > > mind. You will get a huge set of many options that people with > > "TL;DR" state of mind will never be able to review, let alone decide > > what is for them. > > I think there are a few configurations that a beginner would want to change right after he starts Emacs, usually very basic settings. If you think it’s a good idea, I can go to reddit and ask what people missed when then started using Emacs for the first few minutes. I think it could be a good idea to ask users, yes. However, "for the first few minutes" is not a good criterion, IMO: we want to provide a facility for easily finding important options for users who already use Emacs for weeks, maybe months. The options "for the first few minutes" are supposed to be on the Options menu already. > > The grouping of the options must be based on some "themes" or similar, > > to be useful. The challenge is, of course, to come up with a useful > > list of such "themes", and then decide which options should each theme > > enable. > > Others has described the out-of-the-box experience of doom Emacs, it seems to me that such job is better done by a “distribution” of Emacs than by vanilla Emacs. "Better" in what sense? What do the people who maintain Spacemacs or DOOM know about Emacs that we don't? > OTHO, vanilla Emacs could add a tiny guide like I proposed to more or less improve the life for those who started Emacs without reading any tutorial on the internet. Sorry to be negative, but based on experience I have hard time believing in such guides: people who are involved in Emacs development are much better coding than writing good documentation, let alone tutorial documentation for newbies. Let's do what we do best: produce features that make it easier to discover and turn on popular features.