Re: Confused by y-or-n-p

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>
> Cc: eliz@gnu.org, rudalics@gmx.at, emacs-devel@gnu.org
> Date: Sat, 02 Jan 2021 00:25:37 -0500
> 
> I think that y-or-n-p-use-read-key should default to t.
> There is no hurry about making this change.

Personally, I won't mind reversing the default, FWIW.

> After this is included in a release, we can ask users
> to try the value t for a week or two and tell us whether they like it.
> Then we can tell which default is best.

This is not practical, IME.  Adoption of a new release by users is
very slow; I wouldn't be surprised if a year passed before major
distros made a new release their main one.  E.g., we are still getting
bug reports from people who use Emacs 25 and even 24, let alone 26,
although Emacs 27.1 was released 5 months ago.

So waiting for user reports could take a year or more, and by that
time we will probably have the next minor release, so the setting
becomes the de-facto standard that will be harder to change back.

That is why changes in behavior are usually accompanied by a
documented (in NEWS) way of getting the old behavior back.  This way,
users who want the old behavior can silently do that locally, and only
very annoying behavior changes generate so many bug reports that we
later consider reverting it.