"New user" customize group?

"New user" customize group?

[sbaugh]

customize provides an interface for changing many things about Emacs
without any knowledge of Elisp.  But, it can be overwhelming, because
there's just so many things you can customize.

Maybe there should be a "new user" page in customize which has a few
selected settings which new users are most likely to be interested in
changing?  And it should be linked from the splash screen, or perhaps
the tutorial.

Some settings which new users are most likely to be interested in
changing: the theme, the default face, enabling cua-mode, linum-mode,
tab-bar-mode, etc.  Making a customize group or page which can customie
all of these from one place would be a great improvement to the new user
experience, I think.

Inspiration for further settings to include in the new user customize
page could be taken from the most common customizations in popular
pre-created Emacs configurations (like better-defaults, preluade,
spacemacs, doom).  Indeed, if we're careful about it, a new user
customize group could even substantially reduce people's motivation to
use these pre-created Emacs configurations.

This suggestion is inspired by https://emacs.amodernist.com/ which
is a web UI for doing this.  But there's no reason we couldn't do this
in core Emacs.

Re: "New user" customize group?

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: sbaugh@catern.com
> Date: Wed, 20 Apr 2022 10:16:04 -0400
> 
> 
> customize provides an interface for changing many things about Emacs
> without any knowledge of Elisp.  But, it can be overwhelming, because
> there's just so many things you can customize.
> 
> Maybe there should be a "new user" page in customize which has a few
> selected settings which new users are most likely to be interested in
> changing?  And it should be linked from the splash screen, or perhaps
> the tutorial.

Sure, the idea is fine.  It's making it happen that is tough: what
exactly are "new user"s interests is anybody's guess.  Users differ
very much in what would be important for them, because that depends
heavily on what each user needs to do with Emacs, whether he/she is a
programmer or not, etc. etc.

> Some settings which new users are most likely to be interested in
> changing: the theme, the default face, enabling cua-mode, linum-mode,
> tab-bar-mode, etc.

Those are your opinions.  I'm sure many will disagree and point out
other settings new users will most likely want to customize.  For
example, CUA and tab bars are probably quite controversial.

That said, I wouldn't want to discourage anyone from trying to come up
with such a group, so feel free to work on that, and thank you for
your interest in Emacs and its new users.

Re: "New user" customize group?

[Dmitry Gutov]

On 20.04.2022 18:54, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
>> Some settings which new users are most likely to be interested in
>> changing: the theme, the default face, enabling cua-mode, linum-mode,
>> tab-bar-mode, etc.
> Those are your opinions.  I'm sure many will disagree and point out
> other settings new users will most likely want to customize.  For
> example, CUA and tab bars are probably quite controversial.
> 
> That said, I wouldn't want to discourage anyone from trying to come up
> with such a group, so feel free to work on that, and thank you for
> your interest in Emacs and its new users.
> 

I've just looked through the list of proposed choices on 
https://emacs.amodernist.com/ (it has come up on Reddit again), and that 
set looks pretty reasonable. At least the sections General and 
Programming. Maybe Writing as well. The rest seems not so widely applicable.

Re: "New user" customize group?

[Philip Kaludercic]

Dmitry Gutov <dgutov@yandex.ru> writes:

> On 20.04.2022 18:54, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
>>> Some settings which new users are most likely to be interested in
>>> changing: the theme, the default face, enabling cua-mode, linum-mode,
>>> tab-bar-mode, etc.
>> Those are your opinions.  I'm sure many will disagree and point out
>> other settings new users will most likely want to customize.  For
>> example, CUA and tab bars are probably quite controversial.
>> That said, I wouldn't want to discourage anyone from trying to come
>> up
>> with such a group, so feel free to work on that, and thank you for
>> your interest in Emacs and its new users.
>> 
>
> I've just looked through the list of proposed choices on
> https://emacs.amodernist.com/ (it has come up on Reddit again), and
> that set looks pretty reasonable. At least the sections General and
> Programming. Maybe Writing as well. The rest seems not so widely
> applicable.

(I'm operating the site) The list of options on the site was pretty much
just taken from my own configuration, without much more thought than
"this might be useful for newcomers".  Hence there is a lot of personal
bias.  As pointed out, the site is still more a prototype to demonstrate
what might be possible using the model of a "configuration generator".

Re: "New user" customize group?

[Dmitry Gutov]

On 03.09.2022 00:36, Philip Kaludercic wrote:
>> I've just looked through the list of proposed choices on
>> https://emacs.amodernist.com/  (it has come up on Reddit again), and
>> that set looks pretty reasonable. At least the sections General and
>> Programming. Maybe Writing as well. The rest seems not so widely
>> applicable.
> (I'm operating the site) The list of options on the site was pretty much
> just taken from my own configuration, without much more thought than
> "this might be useful for newcomers".  Hence there is a lot of personal
> bias.  As pointed out, the site is still more a prototype to demonstrate
> what might be possible using the model of a "configuration generator".

Thanks! It's a project, even if intended as just a prototype.

I just wanted to point out that we have a good starting point for such a 
"new user" wizard.