Re: An anonymous IRC user's opinion

["Abraham S.A.H." via "Emacs development discussions." <emacs-devel@gnu.org>]

Some thoughts about what have been discussed in this topic:

** The plague of pre-configuration:

Isn't Emacs usable without any pre-configuration, out of the box?
I think it is.  One can install Emacs and use it right away as an
editor without any initial configurations.  Emacs — without any prior
customisation and configuration — already provides much more features
compared to many code/text editors that I know and have worked with.

However, current Emacs' vanilla setup is not all of what make most
Emacs newcomers interested in Emacs and/or discover Emacs.  So they
tend to start customising and tweaking Emacs right away, rather than
using it first.  I'm not sure, but I think this tendency is not
something that Emacs devs or community can prevent.  But at least,
Emacs has to say to it to the user that you can use me without any
prior configuration for most of the simple use cases of a text
editor.

Another problem is that most of those newcomers start doing that
without reading Emacs' manual.  Now, that one has to be clearly
discouraged.  Doesn't matter how intuitive an interface is designed,
it's always good to come with a manual, and Emacs comes with a very
good one.  And it's always advised to use a tool after or alongside
reading its documentation.

\f

** The audience of Doom:

I think, Doom and Spacemacs were and are (at least, partially)
successful in attracting:

1. Previous vi, vim, or neovim users;
2. Anyone who likes VI and VIM key bindings.

Amongst whom are beginners or those who don't like to do the required
configuration to achieve a similar look and feel to Doom
and Spacemacs.

However, it is not as much attractive for other people than those.  But still
there are people using Doom/Spacemacs not being from those two groups.

\f

** A wizard to do the magic work:

What about an initial interactive wizard buffer?  Many complicated
software actually come with that.  Prompting user to choose some 
important options and to declare his/her use case and to notify him
about some important tips.

An initial interactive wizard will force a beginner to pay attention
to notes, tips, suggestions, and warning along helping him/her to
interactively configure and prepare his/her Emacs for its first use.

The interface would use a mechanism much like Emacs' Custom buffers.

That would just open for the first time Emacs is opened or such thing.

--
Best Regards,
Abraham
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