Making Emacs more newbie friendly

[PT]

I'm sure I'm not the first to come up with this idea, but I think it  
really would help if emacs had a newbie-mode which made it easier for  
newbies to get acquainted with it.

I don't even recommend emacs anymore when someone asks me for a good  
editor, because they always complain about emacs being too foreign,  
non-standard, etc.

This newbie mode would be a simple command which when activated would  
change default emacs settings, keybindings to as similar to a more usual  
editor as possible.

This would include for example keybindings which are familiar for new  
users:

        F1 for help, F2 for save file, F3 for load file, etc.

Menus should be activated with Alt+<key>, e.g. Alt-F for File menu. I know  
that Alt-F (Meta-F) is forward word, but I don't think a newbie would miss  
it too much. pc-selection-mode should be the default, so that he can move  
around with arrows + ctrl, shift, etc.

I know there could be a problem with these bindings if emacs is run in a  
terminal, but newbies rarely do that, a graphical environment is more  
common nowadays.

Useful general settings should be turned on by default. column numbers,  
global font lock, etc.

So I'd like a single command which I could put into a newbies .emacs file:

        (newbie-mode)

and this would set everything, so that a new user can perform any simple  
editing operation using only the knowledge he brought from other  
systems/editors. And when he sees that emacs is not the editor from hell  
then he might be more interested to learn more about it.

Anyone thinks it's a good idea?

--
Using Opera's revolutionary e-mail client: http://www.opera.com/m2/