Lennart Borgman writes: > On Tue, May 26, 2009 at 11:52 AM, Alan Mackenzie wrote: >> >> I disagree with Eli that defaults are "only" defaults: they're the >> settings we impose on new users, and are critically important.  If >> they're bad defaults, they could irritate and exasperate users for >> months or years before those users eventually change them.  (C-n >> adding new lines onto the ends of files (which was the default in >> Emacs <= 20) springs to mind here). > > I guess new users will in most cases appreciate the change (since it > makes Emacs behave more like other editing environments), but old > timers will a bit more often dislike it. I agree that this makes Emacs behave more like other editors. But I'm not sure it's something that new users will feel strongly about: How much is emacs _really_ "like other editing environments"? I mean, all the keyboard shortcuts are different. Killing and yanking is very different from Ctrl-C Ctrl-V. Using multiple buffers gets confusing very quickly if you're used to the Windows-style MDI etc. etc. etc. So my point is that making this (rather corner-case) behaviour more like gedit or notepad isn't necessarily a relevant goal: I don't believe that it makes much difference to new users, who are learning a significantly different approach to editing anyway [1]. Now, this post doesn't claim to have any bearing on any of the other arguments put forward in the discussion. My personal feeling is that Drew's suggestion of making a distinction between "programming" and "text" based on major-mode is very sensible. Hope this makes some sense, Rupert [1] Actually, I do have some data here: I'm a Uni student and my housemate started using Emacs at my suggestion a couple of months ago to run inferior octave processes. When I mentioned this thread to him this morning he grinned and said he'd come across the (old) behaviour, but decided that it made sense on balance. So far as I know, he didn't read any info files or help strings about it, so if it made sense without maybe it's not such a bad design!