Re: [PATCH] Remove special requirement to disable startup message.

[Mark Oteiza <mvoteiza@udel.edu>]

On 20/12/15 at 05:46pm, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> > From: Mark Oteiza <mvoteiza@udel.edu>
> > Date: Sat, 19 Dec 2015 17:51:03 -0500
> >
> > After seeing a commentary on the variable here:
> >
> > http://emacshorrors.com/posts/advertising-your-freedom.html
> >
> > and reading bug#13208 and bug#12370, I am inclined to change this
> > behavior. Not only is the checking mechanism in
> > `display-startup-echo-area-message' naïve and error-prone (see
> > bug#13208), but it does nothing to stop the site from disabling the
> > message, which is the only tangible justification (found in bug#12730)
> > for the special treatment to exist. It is trivial for site-start.el,
> > default.el, or init.el to contain
> >
> >   (defun display-startup-echo-area-message () nil)
> >
> > or similar to disable the message for all users (example from bug#13208).
>
> I'm sorry, but I don't agree with the emacshorrors commentary, and I
> don't think we should make disabling this startup message site-wide so
> easy.  The discussion in bug#12370 shows I'm not the only one.

What the discussion fails to show is why this is desirable.

I'm also not the only one asking why such weird treatment is present.

  ;; FIXME? Why does this get such weirdly extreme treatment, when the
  ;; more important inhibit-startup-screen does not.

This was added before either bug#12370 or bug#13208 were filed; the
answers in all of these discussions have been incomplete.

> (Splash screen is different: it shows information useful to first-time
> Emacs users, whereas the echo-area message is about the GNU system and
> the software freedom.)

The echo-area message simply points out the keybinding to show the
splash screen.

> I appreciate your efforts in producing a patch for review, but I'd
> rather encourage development in the other direction:
>
>   . make sure display-startup-echo-area-message cannot be so easily
>     redefined or advised (up to some practical limit)
>
>   . allow the value to be a list of strings, each one a user name, and
>     prevent the echo-area message from being displayed if the user
>     name is one of these strings -- this should take care of the use
>     case in bug#12370
>
> Would you like to work on these enhancements?

Thanks but no thanks.  I'm not interested in obfuscating the
customization of Emacs, and have not yet been given any reason why such
a thing is important.