Re: [ELPA] New package: splash-screen

[Stefan Monnier]

> Here is a mockup:
>
> +–––——————————––––––––––––––––––––––––––––———————————————————————+
> |                                                                |
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> |                         <www.gnu.org>                          |
> |                     GNU Emacs version XX.Y                     |
> |                      Type Ctrl-h for help                      |
> |                                                                |
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> |           GNU Emacs comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY          |
> |        Copyright (C) 2020 Free Software Foundation, Inc.       |
> +–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––———————————————————————+
>
> - No logo (not even in graphical mode)

I think I agree with it: having a picture was useful in Emacs-21 to
showcase the fact that we can have pictures in our buffers, but I think
nowadays our visual prowess won't impress anyone anyway, so we may as
well proudly display our devotion to text.

> - Vertical and horizontal scroll bars are hidden

Fine by me.

> - Modeline is hidden

I think I'm OK with it, but this is slightly dangerous, in case this
splashscreen ever gets displayed when there's more than 1 window in the
frame, in which case the resulting display could be confusing because
there could two windows without any visual separation between them.
If we can avoid that corner case, I'm fine with it.

I like the minimal design, yet I can't help wanting to put more:

- While it technically does say "Free Software" it only does that within
  the copyright statement.  So, maybe we should have something like

    > |           GNU Emacs comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY          |
    > |  Look ma!  No license agreement!  This is truly Free Software  |
    > |         Copyleft (C) 2020 Free Software Foundation, Inc.       |

  And various parts of that text would be hyperlinks.

- We currently have a "GNU/Linux" hyperlink which it would be good to preserve
  within the last 2-3 lines.

- I think many first time users may not want "help" at first, so maybe
  beside "help" we should advertize a "config wizard" or a "choose your
  favorite UI" which would get them to some simple customization page,
  where I'd expect choices like "traditional Emacs UI" or "emulate
  system UI".


        Stefan