Ok, I have had it. A proposal for wizards.

[David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org>]

Emacs comes bundled with a whole lot of packages that are not loaded
by default.  The typical scene when somebody complains to a guru "it
would be so convenient if Emacs could do such-and-such" is "well,
have you enabled/configured this-and-that?" -- blank stare.

So what to do about that?  Wizards.  A wizard is a human-friendly
walk-through through some configuration issue.

A package registers for wizards in manner similar to autoload cookies
(we usually want neither the package nor its wizard loaded unless the
user is actually going to configure anything), and it will usually
register for a major mode instead of a function call.  Now we get a
"wizard" menu with unexamined goodies highlighted, and a conditional
magic wand toolbar button that appears whenever any goody for the
current major mode has not yet been examined.  The autoload
cookie-like thing will be enough to provide a title line such as

RefTeX  Manage Crossreferences, Indexes and tocs in TeX modes
[Mark as Seen] [Configure] [Info]

When I press [Mark as Seen], this means the obvious thing (it will
register the fact in a customized variable or something).  When I
press [Info], I get the manual, when I press [Configure], I enter a
dialog with explanations of what the stuff does and Yes/No questions
and the most important customizable variables.  This dialog will
obviously be stored in a file of its own so as to be only loaded when
needed (usually once per user).  When new packages get installed
side-wide, appropriate wizard entries would want to get added in order
to notify the users that new features are available.

I mean, take a look alone at the minibuffer-related modes: we have
oodles of useful things like iswitchb-mode, file-name-shadow-mode,
minibuffer-electric-default-mode and so on.  Nobody ever uses them
because nobody knows about them.  And would have to read info pages
in order to find out more, and follow the instructions in each of
those different files for switching the feature on, and so forth and
so on.  Too much trouble.

Advanced modes (like AUCTeX or cperl-mode or so) would register their
wizards also in the modes they are supposed to supplant.  That way
people would be notified if superior or different alternatives were
available.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum