Re: Transient Mark Mode on by default

[paul r]

2008/3/24, Sascha Wilde <address@hidden>:

>  Further more, I recall from my newbie times, that being forced to look
>  at the manual for some rather basic features I expected from an editor
>  like Emacs to have, actually helped me, as it made me come across some
>  of the less obvious features early.

I really agree, because I had the same experience. On the other hand,
5 years ago, I got really frustrated beginning on emacs, so much that
I gave up. I came back to it 2 years later, because someone pushed me,
gave me its .emacs, helped me to get hands on.

I think this, really, is a fundamental question : "On what criterion
should we choose defaults ?"

Here are some of my thoughts :
 -  pushing educational ambition in default settings, really, is a big
mistake. You want to educate, so improve tutorial, improve
documentation, make more interactive tutorials. But do *not*
deliberately harden the way for beginners.
  -  It should *never* be a target make the default set so that gurus
here can minimize the size of their .emacs, ideally having a void
.emacs. Beginners should be comfortable using emacs, even with a void
.emacs. Not advanced users.
  - never compromise the wonderfull ability of emacs to be fully
customizable ( I do not worry too much about this one ;)

What are yours ?

Regards,

-- Paul