From: Roland Lutz <rlutz-ml@hedmen.org>
To: emacs-devel@gnu.org
Subject: Stop fiddling with my preferences
Date: Sun, 23 Nov 2014 16:35:37 +0100 (CET) [thread overview]
Message-ID: <alpine.DEB.2.11.1411231623120.4785@home.local> (raw)
I've been using Emacs for quite a while, and I think it's a great program.
Sure, things work differently than in most newly-written GUI applications,
but at least for me, they work *better*.
For the past few months, however, each time I upgraded to a new version of
Emacs, something in the behavior changed. I had to figure out each time
what it was that caused the change and how to compensate for it. This
usually took me an hour or more since it isn't easily documented and most
solutions suggested on the web have unwanted side-effects. Right now, the
compatibility section in my .emacs file reads:
(set 'x-select-enable-clipboard nil)
(set 'x-select-enable-primary t)
(set 'select-active-regions nil)
(set 'mouse-drag-copy-region t)
(set 'delete-active-region nil)
(set 'electric-indent-chars (remq ?\n electric-indent-chars))
This sort of behavior changes is common among browsers and proprietary
operating systems, but does this make it appropriate for Emacs? One of
the reasons I'm using mature software is exactly that I *don't* have to be
worried with each new version that ESC won't stop playing animated GIFs
any more, etc.
I'm not arguing about defaults (I think they shouldn't change without a
good reason--other than personal preference--either, but that's an
entirely different story) but that I don't want them to change once I've
got used to how Emacs works.
How about not changing the defaults but shipping an updated skeleton
.emacs file instead?
How about a command like (use-defaults VERSION)?
Also, I'd appreciate if the history of user-visible changes included the
commands necessary to restore the previous behavior.
Roland
next reply other threads:[~2014-11-23 15:35 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 22+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2014-11-23 15:35 Roland Lutz [this message]
2014-11-23 16:27 ` Stop fiddling with my preferences Eric S. Raymond
2014-11-23 17:32 ` Eli Zaretskii
2014-11-23 17:45 ` Roland Lutz
2014-11-23 17:59 ` Eli Zaretskii
2014-11-23 16:42 ` Eli Zaretskii
2014-11-23 17:25 ` Fabrice Popineau
2014-11-25 14:25 ` Sebastian Wiesner
2014-11-25 16:47 ` Eli Zaretskii
2014-11-25 17:12 ` Sebastian Wiesner
2014-11-25 17:29 ` Eli Zaretskii
2014-11-25 17:30 ` Sebastian Wiesner
2014-11-25 19:18 ` Fabrice Popineau
2014-12-01 7:15 ` Bob Proulx
2014-12-01 13:42 ` Stefan Monnier
2014-12-01 15:54 ` Eli Zaretskii
2014-11-30 14:02 ` Stefan Monnier
2014-11-30 14:15 ` joakim
2014-11-30 15:00 ` Eric Abrahamsen
2014-11-30 14:31 ` H. Dieter Wilhelm
2014-11-30 15:43 ` Eli Zaretskii
2014-11-30 19:32 ` H. Dieter Wilhelm
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