Re: Emacs starter kit - disabled menus

[haziz <hsaziz@gmail.com>]

On Friday, April 29, 2011 3:00:43 PM UTC-4, Stefan Monnier wrote:
> > I am not sure if this is the most efficient way to do it, but if you comment
> > out (one or two semicolons ;; ) the first three lines of Lisp code in the
> > init.el file, this will restore the menus, buttons and scrollbars.
> 
> A simpler way might be to start with an empty .emacs file (no starter
> kit or any such thing), check the Options menu since it contains the
> most frequently asked configuration variables, and post questions in
> this newsgroup when you don't know how to do something.
> 
> 
>         Stefan

I agree to some extent, but that would basically disable the "Emacs Starter Kit" completely since it depends on loading a few packages through the init.el file and other Lisp files in the .emacs.d directory. The "Emacs Starter Kit" is heavily oriented towards dynamic languages e.g. ruby and I personally did not find it very useful, however if he wants to explore it further he can leave the init.el file intact and just comment out (or erase) the three offending lines of code, which are:

(if (fboundp 'menu-bar-mode) (menu-bar-mode -1))
(if (fboundp 'tool-bar-mode) (tool-bar-mode -1))
(if (fboundp 'scroll-bar-mode) (scroll-bar-mode -1))

This would enable him to restore the menus, buttons and scrollbars and still utilize the Emacs Starter Kit if he so chooses. I personally did not find it very useful but most of my use of emacs is in developing in C rather than dynamic languages and I also did not appreciate some of the defaults selected by Phil Hagelberg (technomancy) the original poster of the Starter Kit on Github.
BTW if you place a separate .emacs file in your home folder this would also automatically disable any references to the .emacs.d directory and the init.el file contained within also effectively disabling the Starter Kit completely. It really depends on whether you want to check out the "Emacs Starter Kit" at all or not. Most of my references to "dot" files and directories of course assumes you are working on a Unix system including Linux or Mac OS X. The names may start differently on a Windows system.