Re: [External] : Re: indent-tabs-mode default [was: Representation of the Emacs userbase on emacs-devel]

[Tim Cross <theophilusx@gmail.com>]

Po Lu <luangruo@yahoo.com> writes:

> Dmitry Gutov <dgutov@yandex.ru> writes:
>
>> BTW, Po Lu, what do you think of the latter option? If you have a
>> company-wide "Emacs Users" channel, on IRC/Slack or whatever, that
>> shouldn't take too much effort.
>
> Well it would certainly be possible, but still an annoyance, compared to
> leaving it as-is.

Changing defaults is going to be annoying for some, just as leaving them
as is will continue to be annoying for others. In this case, it would
appear the two groups are about evenly distributed, so either way, some
proportion of users will be annoyed and using it as a reason to change
or not change adds little.

The question is really what would be the expected behaviour for new
users? I don't know how to determine the right answer to that question
or even if there is a right answer.

The only thing which seems important really is how easily the new user
can discover the right setting to get the behaviour they want and how
easily that behaviour can be configured. From memory, that was not as
straight-forward for a new user as it could be (but then again, for me,
that was nearly 30 years ago and things have changed, so perhaps it is
now easier than it once was. I clearly recall it taking some effort to
get the behaviour I wanted when first starting with emacs wrt tabs v
spaces).

I also don't think all defaults are equal and should not be treated as
such. Some defaults feel somewhat arbitrary - indent-tab-mode feels like
one of these. However, other defaults are more critical as they can
impact on more subtle or advanced behaviour and selecting the right
default may impact on how easily users discover the benefits of that
advanced behaviour.