Re: A proposal for a friendlier Emacs

[Andrea Corallo]

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

>    > What is lost exactly?  You have the _exact_ same information, plus
>    > some (that of a on-click setup).  Having a special new-user dialog
>    > would be a loss in information since it would hide the splash screen
>    > which provides valuable information for new and old users alike.
>    >
>    > If users don't read the normal splash screen, there is no reason to
>    > expect them to look at another "setup screen".
>
>    I suspect they probably don't read it because there is too much
>    information already, adding more would just make it worst.
>
> If the few paragraphs on the splash screen are deemed "too much
> information" then why would they read any other page?! 
>
> Lets not assume that users are that lazy ...

IMO is quite a realistic scenario, so I'll assume that.

>    >    I claim that opening Emacs on new accounts with no .emacs will be
>    >    infrequent for most users.  
>    >
>    > Just today I accessed four different machines where I had never logged
>    > in (mainly for development stuff, where the machines run different
>    > operating systems, often new VMs setup for whatever).  Sometimes it is
>    > accessing the machine as root, sometimes it is as my self.
>
>    Which _exact_ part of the spash screen have you used in this process?
>
> Visit new file and Open Home Directory.
>
>    How this proposed menu would have made harder your job today?

Apologies wanted to write buffer.

> We are talking about the splash screen, not a menu.  The suggestion
> (as I understood it) was to replace the splash screen with a wizard if
> and only if there was no .emacs (or similar).  Then do magic to
> somehow keep track if a user had "picked" a provided configuration
> (vanilla, different, or configuration wizard) of Emacs.  Only then,
> would you get the current splash screen when you start emacs.
>
> That is a strange behaviour, and very much annoying one to keep track
> of.  

Sorry I have hard time imaging experienced users regularly using the
splash screen to open files, I find surprising this is your experience.