Re: Representation of the Emacs userbase on emacs-devel

[Philip Kaludercic]

Arthur Miller <arthur.miller@live.com> writes:

> Dmitry Gutov <dgutov@yandex.ru> writes:
>
>> On 06.09.2021 08:04, Arthur Miller wrote:
>>
>>>>> Different or alternative as Tim proposed goes for anything:).
>>>>
>>>> But it's not "Different", it's rather "Familiar", as far as new users are
>>>> concerned.
>>> That is a different meaning to "different" indeed :). You are interpretting
>>> "different" as not-familiar or unkown, why I was thinking of "different" as 
>>> of
>>> just somethin else.
>>
>> I'm just looking at the profiles as something for the new users. So if we're
>> picking names, tailoring them to the news user seems advantageous.
>>
>>> Maybe it is best just to smash together something and present it rather than
>>> trying people to agree to what is to be done? Like vim-people did with evil?
>>
>> Sure. Please don't let me stop anyone from experimenting and creating 
>> whatever
>> number of different profiles.
>>
>> It's better we start this process, rather than get bogged down here arguing
>> about particulars.
>>
>>> A diffent profile could be just a bunch of settings in a file. Why not just 
>>> take
>>> a so called contermporary setup and put it in a init file, and add a 
>>> customize
>>> variable to let people choose it? Could that work?
>>
>> I was thinking themes can be a good vehicle because someone can both enable 
>> and
>> disable a theme (if they find it doesn't suit their preference) without
>> restarting Emacs.
>
> That is true, but same can be done with a toggle button in customize?
> I remember when Stefan M. proposed to use themes. Themes are just lisp,
> so they can contain any lisp code, but how will it work with visual themes? 
> There
> can be only one theme loaded at time, right? 

No, you can load more than one "theme" at a time, it just usually
doesn't make any sense for visual themes. But I agree, it might be
confusing. There was some talk about "profiles", but I am not sure if
the idea is to reuse the theme system or create something new. From what
I have been experimenting with antinews themes (ie. revert all changes
since Emacs XY), it requires a minor mode to be activated anyway, so it
might also make sense to just provide a minor mode instead of a theme.

>> But, again, let us not have this preconception stop anyone from 
>> experimenting.
>
> Indeed.
>
> By the way, how much work would it be to switch C-x and M-x prefixes to 
> C-space and
> M-space respectively. That way someone could rebind keys to resemble more of
> "modern" key usage (C-o, C-x, C-v etc ). C-z would need rework in terminal. 
> But
> generally, if a prefix can be remaped automatically, it would be an easy 
> thing to
> start with?

I think directly switching might be difficult, because a lot of people
hard-code C-x into keymaps, even without using kbd.

-- 
        Philip Kaludercic