Re: GNU ELPA package discoverability

[Sacha Chua]

Bastien <address@hidden> writes:

> The splash screen is a way to advertize the "World of Emacs" to users:
> IMHO a resource like ELPA fits well with other external resources like
> the GNU/Linux page.
> To align the message with the menu entry, the link can say "Manage
> Emacs packages" while the description would say "Install or uninstall
> additional Emacs packages".

I imagine that a newbie getting into Emacs because of things like Magit
would be excited to see the splash screen or menu item for "Manage Emacs
packages," but might be confused by the short list of packages. They
might think: "Is that all there is? Is my Emacs broken? Is my setup
incompatible with those packages?" 

Here's a Reddit post from two years ago showing what that confusion
might look like:
https://www.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/8eweus/installing_a_package_manually/

I wonder if there's a way we could make package-archives customization
more discoverable from the list-packages screen. Package Archives is in
the Package > Customize list as the third option, after two options that
would probably make newbies' eyes glaze over, and it doesn't suggest
values to add. It also doesn't make it clear that you should run
package-refresh-contents after changing the value, so that might trip up
a few people if they expect to see new changes right away.

It might be interesting to have something like the checkboxes Ubuntu
uses ( https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Repositories/Ubuntu ) so that
people can quickly select from among the main repositories, with a way
to add their own. I'm not sure how that fits into the Customize
interface, though...

Sacha Chua