Re: Improved welcome screen

[Stefan Kangas]

Dmitry Gutov <address@hidden> writes:

> I like this direction quite a bit. Not crazy about the part after the
> dashed line, though, but it's less clear what we can replace it with.

Thank you, this is good feedback.  For this first draft, I tried to
include all information that was there before.  But I'm personally
happy to incorporate further changes along the lines you suggest.

As for the version information, we could just mention the major and
minor version in the first sentence:  "This is GNU Emacs version
28.0.50, [...]"
Or we could decide that the version information is not really needed
at all for the purposes of this screen.  I don't have a very strong
opinion here except that I don't think it's ideal to advertise details
like the cairo version at the very top of the screen (as before).

> The "NO WARRANTY" can probably just live in the Help menu. Or move to
> the middle. Maybe by replacing the "Ordering Manuals" item which could
> obtain more prominence in "(emacs) Top". Or by having a fourth item
> there. Maybe we can have 4 items in each column.

I thought there was some kind of legal reason that "NO WARRANTY" is on
that screen?  If it's not, we might as well move it out of the way, I
agree.

The "Ordering Manuals" could indeed get more prominence in "(emacs)
Top" instead.

We could have four items in each column, if necessary.  Somehow humans
like it when there are only three things though - it's a general
principle in graphical design.  It "feels" better to most people for
some unknown reason.  Content obviously trumps that, but I propose we
also keep that (secondary) aspect in mind.

> Speaking of the Guided Tour, EWW is nifty and all, but it renders that
> page worse than any normal browser.

Indeed.  I filed a feature request for a new max width option:
https://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=40909

The images are also rendered to be very small, so maybe it would be
good to file a feature request for that.

Best regards,
Stefan Kangas