Re: Default emacs init file location confusion

[Robert Pluim]

>>>>> On Wed, 08 Jan 2020 09:22:12 +0200, Eli Zaretskii <address@hidden> said:

    Eli> On January 8, 2020 7:33:20 AM GMT+02:00, "Elias Mårtenson" 
<address@hidden> wrote:
    >> 
    >> Given the large number of people who seem to have run into the same
    >> issue,
    >> most of which are users who have years if not decades of Emacs
    >> experience
    >> shows that something should be done before the release of 27.
    >> 
    >> Having thought about it some more, I came up with this proposal: Emacs
    >> could check if both directories exist, and if so, provide an
    >> interactive
    >> choice for the user to pick which one to use. If the user don't want
    >> to
    >> have to answer this question every time Emacs starts up, they can
    >> delete
    >> one of the directories.

    Eli> Here's my proposal:

    Eli>   . If neither the old nor the new (XDG compliant) directory exists, 
default to ~/.emacs.d (it will be created, as we did before)
    Eli>   . If both the old and the new directory exist, use ~/.emacs.d
    Eli>   . Otherwise use the XDG compliant directory

    Eli> This will make the new XDG compliant directory an opt-in feature:
    Eli> users who want that will have to create ~/.config/emacs, move there
    Eli> the contents of ~/.emacs.d, and then delete the latter, in order to
    Eli> have Emacs use the XDG convention.

Except that now the issue becomes "I created ~/.config/emacs, and
emacs doesnʼt use it". Presumably some portion of the users doing that
creation would be doing so because they'd read about it in NEWS, so
they'd know to delete ~/.emacs.d, but not all, hence Iʼd prefer:

       Use the XDG directory if it exists, but donʼt create
       it. Otherwise, use ~/.emacs.d (and create it if necessary).

    Eli> I don't like to pop up questions at startup, brcause users don't
    Eli> expect such questions, and because people who would like to keep their
    Eli> existing ~/.emacs.d and yet use ~/.config for other programs will need
    Eli> to respond to this prompt every time they start Emacs.

I agree about the pop ups, but the prompt would only be if
~/.config/emacs existed, not ~/.config, so deleting it would stop the prompt.

Robert