Re: Making Emacs more friendly to newcomers

[ndame]

>
> You can still have Emacs traditional/classic/call-it-whatever
> mode and other modes that emulate other text editors.

Veterans said they don't like when emacs defaults change and they
have to modify their configs to go back to old defaults.

The solution discussed recently when if emacs is started without
config then it offers modern settings to the user can be a good workaround.

This may not work always, because I saw 1-2 line config files created
by a given *nix distribution, so in that case the check would
fail for new users.

So in addition the other suggestion about a big, conspicuous button added
to the splash screen should also be implemented. A button with text like
"I'm new to emacs, give me friendly settings!" which when pressed sets up
emacs to be similar to the usual standards.


> It already exists
> in Emacs, that is what evil & co does, there is CUA-mode etc.


Emacs should have keybinding-themes like in other editors which
offer various keybinding variants.  E.g in IntelliJ:

IntelliJ IDEA automatically selects a predefined keymap based on your 
environment. Make sure that it matches the OS you are using or select the one 
that matches shortcuts from another IDE or editor you are used to (for example, 
Eclipse or NetBeans).

https://www.jetbrains.com/help/idea/configuring-keyboard-and-mouse-shortcuts.html


The tricky thing is these key-themes should be reflected in the documentation 
too, so,
for example, you couldn't have hardcoded keys in info, but rather info should be
an active document, that is, when it talks about keys invoking commands then
it should query the active bindings for the commands and show those to  present
a documentation which is consistent with the current keymap-theme.