Re: A proposal for a friendlier Emacs

[Alfred M. Szmidt]

   > What is lost exactly?  You have the _exact_ same information, plus
   > some (that of a on-click setup).  Having a special new-user dialog
   > would be a loss in information since it would hide the splash screen
   > which provides valuable information for new and old users alike.
   >
   > If users don't read the normal splash screen, there is no reason to
   > expect them to look at another "setup screen".

   I suspect they probably don't read it because there is too much
   information already, adding more would just make it worst.

If the few paragraphs on the splash screen are deemed "too much
information" then why would they read any other page?! 

Lets not assume that users are that lazy ...

   >    I claim that opening Emacs on new accounts with no .emacs will be
   >    infrequent for most users.  
   >
   > Just today I accessed four different machines where I had never logged
   > in (mainly for development stuff, where the machines run different
   > operating systems, often new VMs setup for whatever).  Sometimes it is
   > accessing the machine as root, sometimes it is as my self.

   Which _exact_ part of the spash screen have you used in this process?

Visit new file and Open Home Directory.

   How this proposed menu would have made harder your job today?

We are talking about the splash screen, not a menu.  The suggestion
(as I understood it) was to replace the splash screen with a wizard if
and only if there was no .emacs (or similar).  Then do magic to
somehow keep track if a user had "picked" a provided configuration
(vanilla, different, or configuration wizard) of Emacs.  Only then,
would you get the current splash screen when you start emacs.

That is a strange behaviour, and very much annoying one to keep track
of.