Re: discoverability, better defaults and which-key in Emacs

[Jeremy Bryant <jb@jeremybryant.net>]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

>> From: Emanuel Berg <incal@dataswamp.org>
>> Date: Fri, 02 Feb 2024 08:00:22 +0100
>> 
>> Instead of Emacs finding out who is a new user or old, new and
>> old users alike should find what they look for in Emacs.
>> 
>> With configuration, maybe one can have a FAQ specifically for
>> that. If one has the 20 most common configuration use cases
>> listed with Elisp one-liners to do it, that would be a good
>> start. And beyond that, people already have experience anyway.
>
> This idea came up several times here, and was met with a general
> agreement, but no one stepped forward to work on those "most common
> configurations".  And it is not easy to do, since the configurations
> depend on the needs of the user (whether the user is a programmer and
> in what language(s), what other tasks and jobs does the user want to
> accomplish in Emacs -- email, todo items, etc.) and also some general
> user preferences (mouse vs keyboard etc.).
>
> Patches welcome, of course.

Would it be useful to have a few 'starter' commented init files /
configurations.
This would be a built-in version of personal init files, but very small,
and commented.

I can work on such minimal configurations, would you suggest a patch
somewhere specifically in the Emacs tree?  I can work on a patch.



>> Another case is finding code in core Emacs and in ELPA to do
>> stuff so one don't spend time writing Elisp for that oneself.
>> This is an area where I failed big time myself. Maybe today
>> googling can offer more as much more code is available online?
>
> The Emacs apropos commands, if used wisely, should help you.  You
> might find that some of our documentation needs to be enhanced to make
> discoverability easier, in which case please report the deficiencies,
> so we could make this better.
>
>> I for one would be very interested to know what of my Elisp
>> I can discard in favor of using stuff in core Emacs.
>> But I don't have a confident answer how to find out.
>
> Some Emacs commands I suggest for this are:
>
>   C-u M-x apropos
>   M-x apropos-documentation
>   C-h R elisp RET followed by 'i' (Info-index) and the subject

Would it make sense to have a specific small section in the Emacs manual
that
Then a link to that manual section could be provided early on
A sort of 'discoverability start point'?
I can work on a manual patch if you think this would be a good place for
it?