Re: [External] : Turning on savehist-mode by default

[Visuwesh <visuweshm@gmail.com>]

[சனி நவம்பர் 18, 2023] Philip Kaludercic wrote:

>>> especially when it is something that (practically)
>>> all beginners would be interested in,
>>
>> How is that known?
>
> It is not known, otherwise there wouldn't really be a discussion.  Our
> knowledge can only approximate reality through experience and talking
> with different kinds of Emacs users.
>
> Taking the example of savehist-mode, then my experience, which takes
> different kinds of users, of different experience levels, people I have
> met online and in-person, appears to indicate that this is a popular and
> useful feature.
>
> [...]
>>> The issue is that beginners neither know how to do it, nor
>>> what all the options are that they might be interested in.
>>
>> And yet it's "done by (practically) everyone"?
>
> Let us say, "(practically) everyone" who manages to stay along, by
> finding the right options to create a comfortable and productive
> environment for themselves.  There are certainly many beginners that
> never change this user option; but I suspect that these are also the
> ones that never get to taking a look at any user options, because they
> give up too soon.

FWIW, I came to know of savehist-mode fairly late into my Emacs usage
and had no motivation to turn on since most of the time the minibuffer
history is filled with garbage that can be discarded without causing
pain.  If savehist-mode were to be turned on by default, I would
promptly turn it off in my config and call it a day.

I think I would use the mode if it had a whitelist of histories to track
rather than a blacklist, and/or if the history influenced the completion
sorting a la prescient.el.