Re: Initial splash screen

[David Kastrup]

Stephen Berman <address@hidden> writes:

> On Fri, 22 Jun 2007 10:11:07 +0200 David Kastrup <address@hidden> wrote:
>
>> Sascha Wilde <address@hidden> writes:
>>
>>> Jason Rumney <address@hidden> wrote:
>>>
>>>> How about if Emacs left the splash screen as the active buffer if there
>>>> were no files listed on the command-line, until the user deliberately
>>>> switches buffers (either with C-x C-f to edit a new file, or C-x b to
>>>> *scratch*)
>>>
>>> Please don't.  There is nothing more useless than a splash screen --
>>> there is a good reason, that we have inhibit-splash-screen.
>>
>> By the way: I think that our choice of having the splash screen
>> displayed by default even when Emacs is called with a file name is a
>> mistake.  Even more so if the same happens when using emacsclient.
>
> This may have been suggested before (I haven't searched the archives
> for it), but since the issue has been raised again, what about this:
> show the splash screen the first time the user invokes Emacs (even
> with a file name) and ask whether to show it on the next invocation.

This is a bad idea since the splash screen contains quite a bit of
_useful_ information, and starting Emacs without a filename gives us a
frame where nothing useful can be displayed yet.

So there is no point in not showing the splash screen indefinitely if
we are called without file name.

But _with_ a file name, the situation is different, and we should
cater for it differently.

The same, incidentally, would hold in my opinion when using desktop.el
to restore a desktop: again, we have then a buffer displaying useful
information.

-- 
David Kastrup