Re: Folding emacsclient into emacs

[Juri Linkov]

>>> Much simpler heuristic would be checking for the existence of the
>>> dot emacs: if .emacs exists in the user's home directory this
>>> definitely means that the user is not a complete beginner
>>
>> Disagree.  Just click "Options/Word Wrap in Text Modes" and
>> "Options/Save Options" and you qualify as an expert without startup
>> screen access?  No.

If the user is already familiar with the Emacs menu structure,
the user can easily find the item Help->About Emacs.

> Also, the `useradd' command installs some default dotfiles from
> /etc/skel. At least on Red Hat, this includes a basic .emacs file.
>
> (_Why_ they do it this way rather than through default.el is a
> different issue...)

We could compare .emacs with the initial .emacs in /etc/skel,
but I agree this is not worth trying.

Just another idea: what about creating a file ~/.emacs.d/startup-counter,
which contains a number of Emacs invocations, and automatically increment it
after every Emacs startup.  A bigger number would make the startup screen
less annoying: starting with displaying the startup screen in the separate
window and progressing to displaying it in the echo area with less and less
lines.

-- 
Juri Linkov
http://www.jurta.org/emacs/