Re: Someone start maintaining luddites.el

[Yuan Fu <casouri@gmail.com>]

I think it will be good if we focus on discussing whether adding such a feature would harm Emacs, in the form of changing default values too soon. And I’ll save some typing and not reply to your concerns that I think doesn’t contribute to that topic.

> 
>> Even if you don’t read NEWS, you know what the mode does: it keeps
>> Emacs behave the same as it currently is. So you shouldn’t need to
>> remember or read or understand anything. And again, if you don’t like
>> it, you don’t have to use it. So I don’t think it adds any burden to
>> you.
> 
> No, I'll have to read the antinews in order to come to an intelligent
> decision as to whether or not it should be enabled.
> 
>> I think the effectiveness of this mode, in terms of support of adding
>> changes, would be equivalent to “you can add a line of code to .emacs
>> to revert it”. Ie, not much different from the status quo. It’s just
>> AFTER the change is made, one’s life is easier if he decides that he
>> don’t want any of that.
> 
> That's extra trouble for everyone, and you still haven't demonstrated
> why someone won't say:
> 
>  Let's set indent-tabs-mode to nil by default, people can just revert
>  it by turning on luddites-mode.
> 
> Or something to that effect.

People now says "Let's set indent-tabs-mode to nil by default, people can just revert it by adding a line in init.el”, don’t they? luddites-mode doesn’t change anything, in particular, it doesn’t make anything worse.

> 
>> If a variable is removed, we can’t help it. But if it is removed,
>> there must be very good reason to do so and it must has been obsoleted
>> for many years, ie, it’s due time. If it is just obsolete, resetting
>> it shouldn’t hurt anything.
> 
> But one will have to

Have to what?

> 
>>> Then let's see which causes the smallest mob of people who complain.
> 
>> I don’t quite understand that. What are you referring to as “which”?
> 
> "Which one of the options that people are complaining about"

I’m pointing out that there is no definitive answer to when a thing is due to change, so “change when its due” is not a good solution. Now you are saying “let people discuss and come to agreement”, that’s not the same as “change when it's due”. But I guess that’s not relavent to the current topic of “whether luddites-mode hurts Emacs”.

> 
>> They are equivalent, but a switch is more convenient. The whole point
>> (I think) is that it’s equivalent to adding code to init.el, but more
>> convenient: you don’t need to figure out what code to add, you don’t
>> need to maintain the code, you don’t need to remember what that code
>> does and why it is added, etc.
> 
> As I said, you will have to understand _all_ of what changed in order to
> make an intelligent decision to turn it on or off, whereas without such
> a feature, people can just individually revert the changes that cause
> them inconvenience.
> 

Yuan