Re: An anonymous IRC user's opinion

[Eduardo Ochs <eduardoochs@gmail.com>]

On Fri, 4 Oct 2024 at 16:25, Dr. Arne Babenhauserheide <arne_bab@web.de> wrote:
>
> Do you mean something like an improved first time tutorial?
>
> We have something there, but maybe it does not match user expectations
> anymore?

Hi Arne,

Yes! To be honest Anonymous's proposal doesn't make much sense to
me... for example, this,

> Without the user having to know about init file, packages, archives,
> functions, variables, hooks, and endless init file debugging, or even
> to write a single line of elisp.
>
> Users can be from different backgrounds not necessary hackers or
> developers.

that gives me the impression that Anynymous thinks that people should
configure their Emacs first and learn "the rest" later, and that that
would work very well.

I was able to squeeze out some practical ideas from A's proposal -
like:

  1. let's create a hack that adds a button saying "If you are a
     beginner click here" to the splash screen, and make it well
     known;

  2. let's create a way to make it open a certain Org file;

  3. let's discuss how to make that Org file adjust the user's init
     file according to the settings in its checkboxes;

  4. let's create a way to make that easy to install,

  5. let's ask Anonymous to install that on some friends's machines.

They are probably going to say that our _prototypes_ are crap, that
they needed something much more polished, that did exactly what they
wanted and that didn't contain a single sentence that they didn't
understand... and at that point we can plonk them, but we will have
the code for (1), (2), (3), and (4), and that can be useful in the
future...

  (Slightly bitter) cheers,
    Eduardo