Re: newbie .emacs proposal (was Re: RTFM Was: M-x goto-line binding)

[Eli Zaretskii]

[I redirected this to emacs-devel, since gnu.emacs-bug is not a good 
place for prolonged discussions, which will probably follow.]

On Sun, 7 Jan 2001 address@hidden wrote:

>   why not provide a "newbie" (for lack of a better term) .emacs file
> for inexperienced users containing particular settings (w/ good
> comments)?  

Emacs traditionally refrained from distributing eny .emacs files, to 
make a point that customization is a fundamentally personal issue of
each user.

If you don't install such an .emacs anyway, it will be of little use, 
because users will need to find out about it before they could use it.

It might be a better idea to have a special command which turns on a 
``newbie mode'', if there's a place for such a mode.

>   below are some things to consider for a newbie .emacs file.
> 
>   -global-font-lock-mode turned on by default
> 
>   -column-number-mode turned on by default
> 
>   -text-mode turned on by default (in *scratch*?)
> 
>   -a setting to tell Emacs to ask for confirmation when quitting

Why do you think these settings are not good for non-newbies?