From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.io!.POSTED.blaine.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Eli Zaretskii Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: Interactive guide for new users Date: Sat, 12 Sep 2020 15:21:25 +0300 Message-ID: <834ko3dw3e.fsf@gnu.org> References: <875z8ortot.fsf@gkayaalp.com> <83lfhjkq0r.fsf@gnu.org> <8620B5CD-CA92-46BF-80A8-DBE7052F4CA6@gmail.com> <83d02re2uk.fsf@gnu.org> <838sdfdzxo.fsf@gnu.org> Injection-Info: ciao.gmane.io; posting-host="blaine.gmane.org:116.202.254.214"; logging-data="36624"; mail-complaints-to="usenet@ciao.gmane.io" Cc: casouri@gmail.com, emacs-devel@gnu.org To: Gregory Heytings Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane-mx.org@gnu.org Sat Sep 12 14:21:58 2020 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane-mx.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([209.51.188.17]) by ciao.gmane.io with esmtps (TLS1.2:ECDHE_RSA_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:256) (Exim 4.92) (envelope-from ) id 1kH4XV-0009Ns-Nm for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane-mx.org; Sat, 12 Sep 2020 14:21:57 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:34854 helo=lists1p.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1kH4XU-0003hC-Qj for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane-mx.org; Sat, 12 Sep 2020 08:21:56 -0400 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:470:142:3::10]:34876) by lists.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS1.2:ECDHE_RSA_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:256) (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1kH4X2-0003Ha-Ma for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Sat, 12 Sep 2020 08:21:28 -0400 Original-Received: from fencepost.gnu.org ([2001:470:142:3::e]:34499) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1kH4X1-0005rQ-VA; Sat, 12 Sep 2020 08:21:27 -0400 Original-Received: from [176.228.60.248] (port=2739 helo=home-c4e4a596f7) by fencepost.gnu.org with esmtpsa (TLS1.2:RSA_AES_256_CBC_SHA1:256) (Exim 4.82) (envelope-from ) id 1kH4X0-0002Rn-Px; Sat, 12 Sep 2020 08:21:27 -0400 In-Reply-To: (message from Gregory Heytings on Sat, 12 Sep 2020 12:00:54 +0000) X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.23 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane-mx.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: "Emacs-devel" Xref: news.gmane.io gmane.emacs.devel:255322 Archived-At: > Date: Sat, 12 Sep 2020 12:00:54 +0000 > From: Gregory Heytings > cc: casouri@gmail.com, emacs-devel@gnu.org > > >> What do you mean by "other UI elements"? > > > > The mode line, the scroll bars, the menu and the tool bar. > > > > The effect on the mode line is show on the fly, see the video Yuan Fu > made. For the scroll bars, the menu and the tool bar, I don't know if it > is possible to change their appearance within Emacs. Is it possible? It depends. My point, though, is that when one needs to choose from a large number of themes, showing how Emacs will look under a theme makes the selection process easier. So an image sounds like a good way of showing the effect without requiring any action on the user. Images also make it simpler comparing the effects of several themes. > >> Yes, but what I meant is to have a list of font names in the buffer, > >> and choosing a font by clicking on the font name. > > > > Why? The Options menu item I've mentioned pops up the system's font > > selection dialog, which is way nicer than selecting a font from an Emacs > > buffer. To say nothing of being less work. What am I missing? > > > > You're not missing anything. It's just convenience for new users, telling > them to go there and there to do this and that is more confusing than > offering them a limited number of options during the guided tour. You don't need to tell the user do anything, you can pop up the font selection dialog programmatically. > >> It's just an option. In the video by Yuan Fu ( > >> https://youtu.be/0qMskTAR2aw ) you'll see that this screen is a list of > >> checkboxes that the user can tick. > > > > My point is that we should not put there unimportant options, let alone > > those which we recommend not to change from the defaults. > > > > I think the criterion here is not whether an option is from our point of > view important or unimportant, or whether we recommend or not to change > its default value, but whether a user coming from another editing > environment is likely to want it to feel "at home". Yes. But that wasn't my point. My point was that you said "it's just an option", and I said that we should think hard about which options we show there and which we don't. "Important" for the users we have in mind, sure; but are you saying they expect these UI elements to be removed? And if they do, could it be because they don't realize how useful they can be? > If Doom Emacs, Spacemacs and the like disable the tool bar and the > scroll bar, that's an indication that it's something new users might > want. We don't need to be bug-for-bug compatible with Spacemacs and DOOM. Where we think they make a mistake, we should do better. > That being said, I agree with you that perhaps at this point some of the > apropos commands could be mentioned (but not all of them). Perhaps > apropos, apropos-command, apropos-variable, apropos-function? apropos-documentation is also very important.