Re: Gitlab Migration

[Óscar Fuentes]

Dmitry Gutov <dgutov@yandex.ru> writes:

> On 04.09.2021 14:37, Daniel Fleischer wrote:
>> Dmitry Gutov [2021-09-04 Sat 13:59] wrote:
>> 
>>> global-visual-line-mode seems questionable as well -- I don't remember 
>>> seeing this kind of behavior in other coding
>>> editors, which seems to be the aim of this profile. At least not by default.
>> Now it really depends on who we compare with; if we go with the
>> "programmers" profile then one can compare with Vim, VScode and Sublime
>> Text.  The first two do not wrap and the last one does.  Any other
>> editor we should examine for deaults?
>
> Now that I looked, Sublime does have the option to Word Wrap, but it
> seems to be unchecked by default?
>
> Another popular option is Intellij IDEA (no word-wrap by default
> either, as far as I can see). Neither does Atom.
>
> There are also Eclipse and Netbeans, and some others, but AFAIK VS
> Code and IDEA hold the popularity crown these days.
>
> visual-line-mode also has a side-effect of having "simple editing
> commands to act on visual lines" instead of logical ones, so that
> kill-line only kills a part of the line. I couldn't find whether
> Sublime has any similar commands where we could compare the effect.

If this is about replicating what other popular text editors do, why not
simply create emulation modes? sublime-mode, vs-code-mode, etc. Emacs
has a long tradition doing that (see the successive Vi(m) emulation
modes.)

I'll mention that the proposed configuration theming has an important
side-effect: in practice, the user no longer is using Emacs, but a
customization that makes difficult to provide support and benefiting
from existing published resources. An example: if someone posts a
question on help-emacs, the first thing I need to know if he is using
one of those config themes; if the answer is "yes", most likely I will
unable to assist him because I must know the theme and adapt my
instructions in accordance.

IMAO all those arguments about newcomers being turned off by weird
defaults is overblown. I agree that several defaults could be better,
but Emacs should not bend over to compete with the low-effort,
install-and-run editors. IMHO Emacs target audience should de the
high-effort, high-productivity individuals. Things like C-x are not so
important on that context.