Re: Default of jit-lock-stealth-time

[David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org>]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

>> Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org
>> From: David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org>
>> Date: Tue, 27 Feb 2007 23:02:49 +0100
>> >
>> > One evidence I can offer is the number of discussions between
>> > developers where different people tried many times to convince
>> > Richard to turn font-lock on by default.
>> 
>> Where would have been the point in having it turned on by default if
>> "a large majority of users" would turn it on manually, anyway?
>
> To lower the flood of questions posted by newbies asking why they see
> no syntax highlight, _before_ they turn it on.

I can't remember such a flood.  The discussion was very much between
seasoned Emacs users as far as I remember.

>> I see this rather as evidence that people did _not_ turn it on by
>> default, and that Emacs' popularity suffered because of that.
>
> Popularity did suffer, but because newbies couldn't imagine Emacs
> didn't have syntax highlight.  As soon as they learned Emacs did
> have it, they turned it on.

There would still be that flood around to look at since newbies tend
to install stable versions of Emacs.  I still see quite a few
questions about Emacs 21.4 on the help lists.  I can't remember font
lock mode being a topic in that context lately, however.

So I quite definitely disagree with the conclusions you draw from
font-lock history.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum