From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.io!.POSTED.ciao.gmane.io!not-for-mail From: Richard Stallman Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: Making Emacs more friendly to newcomers Date: Wed, 06 May 2020 22:48:02 -0400 Message-ID: References: <4XvMn7QQudwuCq-3cSOnqK_gBoHnmblv2--PKi2oupbCsZwaxxrzA2Chwb6LEzzg1TYjAJNboC8lwPgw8VA5IhYUBs-Jly9HfTqPtsgZUHg=@protonmail.com> <01502186-69cb-86fb-612e-868068e7a998@yandex.ru> <6e2c9c07-31c4-38eb-c679-7e680f9f02ed@yandex.ru> Reply-To: rms@gnu.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset=Utf-8 Injection-Info: ciao.gmane.io; posting-host="ciao.gmane.io:159.69.161.202"; logging-data="99782"; mail-complaints-to="usenet@ciao.gmane.io" Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org To: Nikita Mogilevsky Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane-mx.org@gnu.org Thu May 07 04:48:37 2020 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane-mx.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([209.51.188.17]) by ciao.gmane.io with esmtps (TLS1.2:ECDHE_RSA_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:256) (Exim 4.92) (envelope-from ) id 1jWWaT-000PrM-MR for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane-mx.org; Thu, 07 May 2020 04:48:37 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:49352 helo=lists1p.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1jWWaS-0004OT-Od for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane-mx.org; Wed, 06 May 2020 22:48:36 -0400 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:470:142:3::10]:33814) by lists.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS1.2:ECDHE_RSA_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:256) (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1jWWZw-0003tb-9n for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Wed, 06 May 2020 22:48:04 -0400 Original-Received: from fencepost.gnu.org ([2001:470:142:3::e]:41954) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1jWWZw-0005DH-1B; Wed, 06 May 2020 22:48:04 -0400 Original-Received: from rms by fencepost.gnu.org with local (Exim 4.82) (envelope-from ) id 1jWWZu-00039K-66; Wed, 06 May 2020 22:48:02 -0400 In-Reply-To: (message from Nikita Mogilevsky on Wed, 6 May 2020 11:14:14 -0700) X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.23 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane-mx.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: "Emacs-devel" Xref: news.gmane.io gmane.emacs.devel:249142 Archived-At: [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider ]]] [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]] [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]] > Customize: > This feature is conceptually simple but I found it almost hostile to > interact with. Between, states and unintuitive input fields. I found it > hard to understand what many functions and variables were meant to do or > represent. The documentation for these values showed elisp, so I quickly > transitioned away from customize. I don't know what I would improve here > but I think that many new users are guided to this feature and I don't > recommend them to play with it from personal experiences. I agree that it has big problems. New users could tell us some aspects they notice as difficult. I don't think we can expect them to tell us what would make it better for them -- not in general. All I can suggest is for someone to try implementing a nicer interface and invite some new users to try it, saying which aspects they find less than ideal. Then repeat. Perhaps we should have separate customize code for graphical displays. I expect most new users use those. If it doesn't have to share code with the tty interface, it could be improved more. -- Dr Richard Stallman Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org) Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org) Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)