Re: Making Emacs more friendly to newcomers

[Dmitry Gutov]

On 21.04.2020 17:38, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> > A remaining problem is: How provide the pre-configuration easily and
> > out of the box for new users, without breaking long time Emacs users
> > configuration?
> >
> > A possibility would be:
> > - When Emacs start, it check if a configuration already exist on the
> >    user directory (~/.emacs.d or ~/.emacs)
> > - If yes, Emacs start
> > - If no, Emacs restore the pre-configuration inside ~/.emacs.d then
> >    start
> Does this mean users who download this "shiny Emacs" will be unable to
> upgrade to a newer version?

The pre-configuration could contain just one line:

  (require 'shiny-settings)

where shiny-settings.el is distributed with Emacs and is updated 
together with new releases.

Although, after 5-10 years pass, we'll surely encounter users of 
previous versions unhappy with changes to their shiny-settings too. :-)