Re: Honoring traditional defaults - how to do it. [was: Transient MarkMode on bydefault]

[Mathias Dahl]

>  If the users are beginners, "easily" and "pick from a menu" are mutually
>  exclusive.

Could you elaborate on this? I think menus are a good way to find
options and commands as a beginner. It is how I learn new modes in
Emacs (if I have them turned on, it depends on my mood). Are you
referring to the need to use the mouse to click?

>  Why not?  Any option setting can go into emacs-easy.el.  The idea of the
>  message is not to patronise the users (they already known Emacs can be
>  customised), but to prod them as gently as possible into using the most
>  standard, sleekest, puristest, most efficient configuration.

The question then is what is easy to learn and what is easy to use,
when are they the same and when are they not the same? When I first
started using Emacs I immediately enabled `pc-selection-mode' and used
it for many years. Then, for some reason that I cannot remember, I
wanted to try out the, in my opinion back then, more cumbersome style
of using C-SPC + cursor movement. I still like "shift select" however.
although I don't have it enabled in my Emacs because I want the
binding for moving between windows. I use shift select in every other
place I do text editing and I use it a lot and I like it and I cannot
see what harm it would do to have that enabled by default in Emacs
(apart from binding a couple of previously free keys).

Anyway, I did not really mean to discuss this feature in particular,
it is just an example where it is hard to say what is easy to learn
and what is easy to use. I guess it all depends where we come from and
what other preferences we might have.

Then there are all those other words you used, sleek, efficient, pure,
standard... Of those I think the only one we might have a chance to
agree on when it comes to different scenarios is efficient because it
can be measured quite well. Sleekness, pureness and "standardness",
those are hard...

>  My aim is to soften the painful dilemma we face, that of chosing our
>  default configuration as either "comfortable for newbies" (when they'll
>  never get to become power users) or "lean and mean" (when too many of the
>  newbies will give Emacs up before becoming proficient).

It is a good aim, but I agree with Paul that the default should be
"comfortable to newbies", although that is a very loaded expression
(hmm, does that translate from Swedish to English...). We power users
can always use that extra switch or whatever to get the lean and mean
Emacs that we want, if and when we want it. I sometime use emacs -Q to
get a lean and mean Emacs as I have quite a few bells and whistles
(iswitchb, partial completion mode etc etc etc) turned on in my
.emacs. And, before anyone brings it up, having t-m-m turned on by
default in emacs -Q would not make it less mean. Maybe a bit less lean
though...

I better stop now, good night! :)