Re: Emacs User Friendliness Question/Hope

[Jeff Clough <jeff@chaosphere.com>]

On Fri, 2010-07-16 at 15:07 +0100, Uday S Reddy wrote:
> On 7/16/2010 11:48 AM, Jeff Clough wrote:
> 
> > With Emacs 23.x, this takes only a few lines in my .emacs file.  As the
> > amount of "user friendliness" goes up, the lines in my .emacs will
> > likely also go up (the change to how kill/yank interacts with the
> > clipboard is an example).
> 
> How does it matter if the .emacs grows?

It might not matter to you, but it matters to me and likely to some
other people as well.  I'd rather my .emacs contain only things that
extend the software (new bindings, loading my own lisp, etc.) or set
variables necessary for the packages I use (like pointing slime to
sbcl).  The less code needed to do things like turning something off or
tweaking an "internal" setting, the better.

> Don't you think it is worth the trouble if it helps Emacs continue to stay 
> popular and thriving with new generations of users?

I think some people think it's worth the trouble of changing Emacs to
work in a more expected way for new users.  Some people may also think
it's worth adding a few lines to their .emacs files to accommodate this.
I also think some people would like the number of lines to be kept to a
minimum.

There's a way to let Emacs "continue to stay popular and thriving with
new generations of users" that does not also make it more difficult to
work with (or configure) for existing users that are quite happy with
the way it is now.

I don't think it's unreasonable for a new "usability" feature to check a
global setting before doing it's magic.  Or to otherwise be disabled
unless either enabled specifically or enabled via a global "make Emacs
work like Notepad" command.  Make it on by default, but give me a way to
turn it off with one line, as opposed to having one to three lines for
every one of these enhancements.

Jeff