Re: A proposal for a friendlier Emacs

[Stefan Kangas]

ams@gnu.org (Alfred M. Szmidt) writes:

>    >    On balance this a good thing, IMO.  And if you disagree, it will only
>    >    bother you once.
>    >
>    > No, it will bother _each_ and _every_ time I start a new Emacs where I
>    > have not done so previously.  That is a fairly common situation, both
>    > for new users, but also for experienced users who are the majority of
>    > Emacs users.
>    >
>    > Lets not make Emacs annoying to use, OK?
>
>    I, for one, would be happy to have a one-click option to set a bunch
>    of reasonable defaults whenever I start Emacs on a new device.
>
> And using the splash screen, that exact possibility is also there.  So
> nothing is lost.

Yes, something is lost.  No matter how you go about doing it, it is
clear that it will be significantly less visible.  That's the entire
reason why you are arguing for it, if I understand correctly.

I claim that opening Emacs on new accounts with no .emacs will be
infrequent for most users.  And for users where it is not infrequent,
such as network administrators and the like, it should be easy to turn
the question off using the site file.