On 4 December 2013 06:21, Andrew Hyatt <ahyatt@gmail.com> wrote:

> This isn't the more scientific package usage measurements found elsewhere
> in this thread, but I asked on the Google+ Emacs community, and got a list
> of the following packages people thought should be enabled by default:
>
> cua-mode
> cua-selection-mode
> column-number-mode
> delete-selection-mode
> desktop-save-mode
> dired-x
> global-linnum-mode
> global-subword-mode
> ido-mode
> icomplete-mode
> iswitchb-mode
> recentf-mode
> savehist-mode
> saveplace
> show-paren-mode
> size-indication-mode
> uniquify
>  which-function-mode
> winner-mode
>
> There's more, but the rest are variable settings, keybindings and misc
> functions that are useful. You can find all of it at
> https://plus.google.com/+AndrewHyatt/posts/RTguQsNobjg (may not work
> without javascript).
>
>
>
Based on my experience maintaining Prelude and perusing other popular
configs (ESK, Emacs Live, etc) I'd say the following are good candidates:

* column-number-mode
* delete-selection-mode
* recentf-mode
* savehist-mode
* saveplace
* size-indication-mode
* show-paren-mode
* dired-x
* uniquify (which is already enabled anyways)

All of those are not particularly intrusive and it seems a lot of Emacs
users are using them anyways.  I guess we should avoid enabling by default
packages that are known to be problematic in some situations (like linum
and which-function-mode) and packages that significantly alter the current
default behaviour (like ido).

I also think we should consider replacing dabbrev-expand with hippie-expand
(just rebind `M-/`).


>
> On Tue, Dec 3, 2013 at 11:09 PM, Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>wrote:
>
>> > I did some manual filtering as a test and here are some of the top
>> packages
>> > which remained:
>>
>> > (ido . 137)
>> > (uniquify . 136)
>> > (imenu . 114)
>> > (eldoc . 113)
>> > (ispell . 107)
>> > (flyspell . 91)
>> > (recentf . 90)
>> > (saveplace . 77)
>> > (yasnippet . 75)
>> > (windmove . 70)
>> > (auto-complete . 66)
>> > (delsel . 64)
>> > (paredit . 49)
>> > (iswitchb . 46)
>> > (savehist . 43)
>> > (linum . 38)
>> > (icomplete . 34)
>> > (winner . 34)
>> > (hippie-exp . 32)
>> > (ibuffer . 29)
>> > ...
>>
>> Great, thanks.  `uniquify' is now enabled by default.
>> `ido' is rather problematic because it's a very different interface with
>> incompatible key-bindings and it is not a superset of the current
>> default completion UI.
>>
>> > Ido is at the top (iswitchb is also here) and ido/isiwtchb would really
>> > make a much better first impression for new users than the default
>> > very barebone buffer switching.
>>
>> Iswitchb is marked obsolete in the trunk: you can get the same
>> functionality with icomplete-mode.  So you can increase the count of
>> `icomplete-mode' for all users who have enabled iswitchb without
>> enabling icomplete-mode.
>>
>> The plan for "ido by default" is rather to slowly make ido obsolete by
>> adding the corresponding functionality either in the default completion
>> UI or in icomplete-mode.
>> An alternative is to try and re-implement it on top of the current
>> completion UI.  To a large extent, it boils down to the same.
>>
>> > Of course, this package measurement should be repeated with
>> > representative data, but even with the data acquired from bug reports
>> > it gives some ideas for packages which could be enabled by default.
>>
>> Indeed.  But I think it can be a good starting point for discussions
>> about individual packages.
>>
>>
>>         Stefan
>>
>>
>>
>