Re: Representation of the Emacs userbase on emacs-devel

[Arthur Miller]

Philip Kaludercic <philipk@posteo.net> writes:

> 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.

Ah ok. I have never tried to use several themes at once :). So as I understand,
themes are proposed because they revert stuff automatically to the state as 
before?

If you ask me, I don't care, a minor mode, a theme, or just a file with a bunch 
of
setq:s. I can write a macro to stash away an old value and setq new value, so
it is easy to revert everything back. Whatever works.

>>> 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.

But it's a prefix. Can input methods provide for that? I don't know myself if
suggested C-space M-space is good, but something. I mean nobody want's to
manually rework entire Emacs shortcuts, right? :).