Re: A proposal for a friendlier Emacs

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> Date: Tue, 22 Sep 2020 09:24:37 +0300
> From: Jean Louis <bugs@gnu.support>
> Cc: nicola.manca85@gmail.com, emacs-devel@gnu.org
> 
> > I understand that you have no need for this -- but why do you object
> > to it?
> 
> It is changing defaults and facing me and also the new users with
> complexities, in general, it gives an active obligation to the user
> versus the splash screen that does not disturb the user in the
> workflow.

You personally may find it annoying, but please keep in mind that many
applications nowadays offer to take the user through a similar process
first time the application is started after installation.  So I
presume many newcomers to Emacs will not be surprised by that, and
maybe will even expect something like that.

> Emacs in my opinion does not need configuration assistant that user
> has to confront, as user installed Emacs for text editing purposes,

Emacs is not just a text editor, it is a large and rich environment
for many tasks that require text-processing.  Treating it just as a
program for inserting, deleting, and searching text runs the risk of
missing the point of this discussion.

> Editing		    Basic text editing facilities.
> Text		    Support for editing text files.
> 
> Those two customization groups differ in their description only
> slightly if at all, so that is what is not friendly, as user I would
> not see easy difference. If I click on "Editing" I am referring to
> editing of text, if I click on Text, I am referring to editing of
> text.

Actually, "Text" is not (or at least should not be) about editing
text, it is about editing human-readable text (as opposed to
programming language text, for example).  We should probably make that
clear in the group description, and also make sure the packages in
that category are indeed all about human-readable text.

Thank you for pointing out this point of potential confusion.