Re: longtime user of emacs (was: "Why is emacs so square?")

[Ihor Radchenko]

> I agree with Po Lu that the defaults are reasonable and should certainly
> not be changed lightly.  I'll go further and say that, since emacs is
> designed at its core to be customizable and extensible, the "vanilla
> defaults" are far less critical than they would otherwise be.  Everyone
> has their own preferences.  But it's easy to change any that differ from
> the defaults.  If I'm using a "vanilla" emacs, I usually change scroll-step
> (or -conservatively), but this just takes a moment.  And, if I can't
> recall the variable name, I just do M-x set-variable scroll- [TAB], and
> there they are.

While I agree that the existing Emacs defaults are reasonable in
general, I do not think that they are good for users coming from an
arbitrary background.

Emacs is a very versatile tool and can be used for programming, creative
writing, research, note-taking, todo management, and many more different
fields. I do not think that a single set of defaults can satisfy users
aiming for every single use-case. Moreover, changes required to tweak
Emacs towards a specific use-case are often much more than "just takes a
moment". No surprise that we have a whole spectrum of Emacs startup kits,
which offer predefined set of tweaks for different styles of using
Emacs.

I do think that the existing Emacs defaults are a good starting point
for a new user with unknown workflows. They are generic enough to tweak
Emacs in any possible direction. However, I believe that it would be a
good option to have several sets of defaults, which would better fit
some common use-cases, like programming, note-taking, tramp, git, etc.
Then, the existing defaults will represent "Generic" use-case, but a new
user (who may or may not have programming background) might easily
select other set of defaults, which is more suitable for the user's
background and expected use-cases.

Best,
Ihor

Jeff Norden <jnorden@tntech.edu> writes:

>> Do You think vanilla emacs has good defaults?  If your answer to the
>> previous question is "No". What would You change on vanilla emacs
>> defaults?
>
> I agree with Po Lu that the defaults are reasonable and should certainly
> not be changed lightly.  I'll go further and say that, since emacs is
> designed at its core to be customizable and extensible, the "vanilla
> defaults" are far less critical than they would otherwise be.  Everyone
> has their own preferences.  But it's easy to change any that differ from
> the defaults.  If I'm using a "vanilla" emacs, I usually change scroll-step
> (or -conservatively), but this just takes a moment.  And, if I can't
> recall the variable name, I just do M-x set-variable scroll- [TAB], and
> there they are.
>
> So, I probably wouldn't argue for having the keyboard-quit-strong that I
> posted above become a replacement for keyboard-quit.  Instead, if folks
> think it is a worthwhile idea, maybe a customizable variable could
> control the default behavior of C-g.  Then it just becomes the
> relatively minor question of what the default value should be for this
> variable.
>
> -Jeff
>

-- 
Ihor Radchenko,
PhD,
Center for Advancing Materials Performance from the Nanoscale (CAMP-nano)
State Key Laboratory for Mechanical Behavior of Materials, Xi'an Jiaotong 
University, Xi'an, China
Email: yantar92@gmail.com, ihor_radchenko@alumni.sutd.edu.sg