Re: line-move-visual

[Miles Bader <miles@gnu.org>]

joakim@verona.se writes:
> It would be nice to have something similar to the "skinnability feature"
> some other applications have.
>
> It would make use of Custom, and would allow to group together
> Customizable features in a coherent theme.
>
> So, the default for "line visual" would be nil in the "emacs oldtimer"
> skin, and t in "emacs newbie" skin. There would also be a "Windoze for
> the w*n" skin that would have cua defaults, etc.

The name "skin" may be a misnomer, as typically they're basically
all-or-nothing groups of settings.

I don't think that's a good idea, nor is is a good idea to automatically
change lots of defaults without user-participation -- while we want to
allow the user to customize things easily, there's _also_ some advantage
if they stick to the standard defaults, both for the user (in his
ability to come to terms with emacs in the long term, and be part of the
emacs community), and for Emacs maintainers.

So, instead of changing lots of settings en-masse, (which would tend to
leave the user a bit ignorant of what just happened), how about just
having simple themed customization groups ("get off my lawn", "windows
luser", ...), which present focused groups of settings for the user to
tweak at his pleasure -- but, crucially, don't actually any tweaking for
him.

-Miles

-- 
Erudition, n. Dust shaken out of a book into an empty skull.