Re: Emacs User Friendliness Question/Hope

[Phil Hagelberg <phil@hagelb.org>]

On Fri, Jul 16, 2010 at 7:38 AM, Deniz Dogan <deniz.a.m.dogan@gmail.com> wrote:
> 2010/7/16 Jeff Clough <jeff@chaosphere.com>:
>> On Fri, 2010-07-16 at 15:07 +0100, Uday S Reddy wrote:
>> 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.
>
> But that's easier said than done, isn't it? Where should we draw the
> line between what's "new" and Notepad-ish and what's "old" and
> Emacs-y? To be honest, it sounds like you're looking to add a function
> to Emacs which makes it act exactly as the way you want it to. Every
> Emacs user has their own taste, which is why the init files exist in
> the first place. Let's not start adding what is essentially custom
> user configurations to Emacs.

As the author of the Emacs Starter Kit,
(http://github.com/techomancy/emacs-starter-kit) I feel pretty
qualified to state that there is a demand for a more user-friendly
configuration for Emacs. The Starter Kit is a set of defaults and
bundled libraries (including package.el) that make things a bit more
useful. It includes some improved library support for Ruby, Perl, etc,
enables ido-mode out of the box, and fixes some poor eshell defaults
(most of which have also been fixed in 23). The point is it sidesteps
the politicized process of changing the actual Emacs defaults, and
it's been immensely popular; there are thousands of people using it.

Once package.el stabilizes in Emacs, it's my plan to bundle up as much
as I can from the Starter Kit into just another set of packages. That
way people can simply select and install packages to get a good
out-of-the-box experience, and the old guard can continue undisturbed.
Perhaps another set could be created that target people who are used
to an IDE?

-Phil