Re: Changes for emacs 28

[Ergus]

On Mon, Sep 07, 2020 at 11:19:44AM -0400, Yoni Rabkin wrote:
> Ergus <spacibba@aol.com> writes:
>
>
> Configuration defaults, configurability, and features are
> interchangeable in this discussion.
No, they aren't. New features need to be implemented new defaults is
actually something that comes out of the box.

> That's an interesting initial point, but I don't follow the leap you
> made since there are no details. You are trying to make a strong point
> in comparing a week of failure to an hour of success. But unfortunately
> that doesn't explain what needs to be changed.
This was just an example and a personal anecdote to show that some
better defaults are possible without too much effort to "attract" fresh
blood to emacs.

> Convince to do what? Have they been convinced to move to Emacs as a
> development platform going forward? To use Emacs just for the course? To
> value software freedom?
As of today people start appreciating free software if they see it is
useful. If they go for geany or vim it is also free software, but as
emacs developers we should be concerned why if this becomes frequent
pattern (that people try and not stay enough to discover the rest).

> Conversely, if they used "sublime" (which I assume is an editor) for
> that university course, does that mean that they have rejected software
> freedom in some way? Does that mean they are now life-long sublime
> users? Do they also read their email, browse the web, listen to music,
> watch videos, and interface with task-management systems via sublime?
FWIS people come to emacs looking for the basic feature: an editor (with
steroids).

If that is no as satisfying as they expect (or has disadvantages over
gedit, sublime or any other, or require 300 lines of configurations for
the basics) then they don't stay enough to discover the rest.

> I hope those questions don't come across as badgering. Instead, I'm
> trying to point out that the conclusions you've come to aren't implied
> by the information you've provided.
>
> If you've found a way to provide a popular configuration for Emacs for
> your university environment, it may make sense to package that and make
> it easy to install. After all, the power of Emacs is in what it can
> become, as opposed to what it is when you load it.
Yes, but it doesn't mean that we have to provide the worst possible
defaults.
> I would try to argue for a robust and easy way for you to be able to
> provide people with the kind of setup for Emacs that you are obviously
> enthusiastic about, regardless of how Emacs loads. If you can't do that,
> then to my mind Emacs is indeed missing something.
That's the point. Emacs can do so (and much more) but users need to stay
enough to discover that, learn the environment and so on. I was just
talking about THAT first impression to keep them more than 10 minute and
think it worth cross the barrier if the new bindings, no right click for
everything and so on.

> I'm unsure of what you mean by that. If those have features that GNU
> Emacs doesn't and that you want, then you should port them
> over. Unfortunately, I have a feeling we may be talking past each other
> on this point.
>
> --
>   "Cut your own wood and it will warm you twice"