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

[Philip Kaludercic <philipk@posteo.net>]

Drew Adams <drew.adams@oracle.com> writes:

>> > There are a zillion minor modes that many
>> > users find useful to turn on by default.
>> > It doesn't follow that `emacs -Q' should
>> > turn on any of them by default.
>> 
>> If something is done by (practically) everyone,
>
> Is it?

Given that my sentence was a hypothetical, I cannot answer this question
since the term "something" cannot be unambiguously instantiated as to be
answered concretely.

>> 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.

>> I wouldn't dismiss the proposal to enable it by default.
>
> I don't dismiss it.

So you don't oppose enabling savehist-mode by default?

>> 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.

> ___
>
> Let's enable `delete-selection-mode' by default.
>
> It took decades to get `transient-mark-mode' ON
> by default.  `delete-selection-mode' completes
> that job.  It welcomes new users with the same
> type-to-replace behavior they're used to outside
> Emacs (everywhere).
>
> Persists nothing.  Is easy for anyone not who
> doesn't want it ON to turn OFF.

One has to keep in mind that there are a lot of people who use Emacs,
and are familiar with the "feel" of the default key bindings or at least
some subset of these, without having much of an understanding of how to
do things or what is going on.  These are users that should nevertheless
be respected -- hence my point that enabling a feature has to take the
workflow of people into account, for whom a change would break an
expectation.

Note that I am *not* saying that the goal should be to accommodate
newcomers (following whatever current trends may be) at any cost,
especially when this comes at the expense of long-term users.

To make this argument with savehist-mode, one would have to make the
use-case believable, that someone expects the history of mini-buffer
input to not persist between sessions.  I think that is a claim that it
a lot harder to justify, than that inserting a key while a selection is
active, replaces the selection.

-- 
Philip Kaludercic