Re: discoverability, better defaults and which-key in Emacs

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> From: Jeremy Bryant <jb@jeremybryant.net>
> Cc: Emanuel Berg <incal@dataswamp.org>, emacs-devel@gnu.org
> Date: Sat, 03 Feb 2024 11:39:50 +0000
> 
> 
> Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:
> 
> >> From: Emanuel Berg <incal@dataswamp.org>
> >> Date: Fri, 02 Feb 2024 08:00:22 +0100
> >> 
> >> Instead of Emacs finding out who is a new user or old, new and
> >> old users alike should find what they look for in Emacs.
> >> 
> >> With configuration, maybe one can have a FAQ specifically for
> >> that. If one has the 20 most common configuration use cases
> >> listed with Elisp one-liners to do it, that would be a good
> >> start. And beyond that, people already have experience anyway.
> >
> > This idea came up several times here, and was met with a general
> > agreement, but no one stepped forward to work on those "most common
> > configurations".  And it is not easy to do, since the configurations
> > depend on the needs of the user (whether the user is a programmer and
> > in what language(s), what other tasks and jobs does the user want to
> > accomplish in Emacs -- email, todo items, etc.) and also some general
> > user preferences (mouse vs keyboard etc.).
> >
> > Patches welcome, of course.
> 
> Would it be useful to have a few 'starter' commented init files /
> configurations.
> This would be a built-in version of personal init files, but very small,
> and commented.

I think the idea was to have an interactive feature, whereby a user is
asked questions regarding his/her preferences and needs, and the
related features are then enabled.

A related idea was to come up with mostly-independent groups of
settings that are suitable for some general usage pattern.  For
example, someone who needs to develop Python programs might want
certain optional features enabled.

Having init files like you suggest once again places the burden on the
users to read the comments and decide what to do about them.  I think
this is not the optimal solution.

> > Some Emacs commands I suggest for this are:
> >
> >   C-u M-x apropos
> >   M-x apropos-documentation
> >   C-h R elisp RET followed by 'i' (Info-index) and the subject
> 
> Would it make sense to have a specific small section in the Emacs manual
> that
> Then a link to that manual section could be provided early on
> A sort of 'discoverability start point'?

We already have it: see the beginning of the "Help" node in the user
manual.