Re: Folding emacsclient into emacs

[David Kastrup]

Juri Linkov <address@hidden> writes:

>>> 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.

Why would he be familiar with the menu structure because he used one
menu once?

>> 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.

No.  The _default_ configuration should be one that does _not_ mess
with getting basic work done.  At the same time, Emacs should not
change its behavior without being asked.  In particular not with
regard to a feature which we consider essential for new users.

If a sysadmin is asked to do something on a user account and starts
Emacs a few times while working on that, it is not acceptable that by
the time the user starts Emacs, the help information is no longer
available, either because the sysadmin had to reconfigure Emacs in
order to get his work done, or because Emacs reconfigured itself.

If we find a "startup screen less annoying" that still gets the
relevant pointers across if the user chose not to learn the initial
obnoxious startup by heart, then there is no good reason not to use
this setting right from the start rather than after a number of
iterations.

-- 
David Kastrup