Re: Honoring traditional defaults

[Sascha Wilde <wilde@sha-bang.de>]

"Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@xemacs.org> wrote:

> On the other hand, the "everything I need to know about Emacs I
> learned in kindergarten" crowd *should* have a "revert to tradition"
> customization available.

While I actually had fun reading your mail I think your "solution"
points in the wrong direction.  It seems you are assuming the problem is
about a bunch of old farts not willing to change there overcome habits.

But what the problem is really about is some poor youngsters, grown up
in the believe, that operating computers is all about hunting a little
box around your desk and the only detail they disagree about is the
number of buttons that are supposed to be on that little box.

Maybe I'm mistaken, but afaik there is already a special mode for those
spoiled rodent lovers: CUA mode.  And even more: there is already a wide
consensus not to make CUA default.

So, the defaults can be kept the way they are: a useful but non
intrusive starting point for every users customization.

That does not mean that the defaults should never change, it only means
that the main target of the defaults shouldn't be what newbies might
_expect_.  (Note, how that is different from what might be really
_useful_ to newbies.)

cheers
sascha
-- 
Sascha Wilde   -.-. ..- .-. .. --- ... .. - -.-- 
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