Re: Frequently Enabled Packages - Emacs-24.4 survey (Please participate)

[Rüdiger Sonderfeld]

On Sunday 08 December 2013 14:56:55 Michael Albinus wrote:
> Jambunathan K <address@hidden> writes:
> > Exercise judgement in interpreting the results.
> > 
> > | Packages/Modes            | Upvote / User count |  % |
> > |
> > |---------------------------+---------------------+----|
> > |
> > | tramp                     |                  11 | 12 |
> 
> Tramp is part of the Emacs distribution, and it is enabled by
> `file-name-handler-alist'. Does this figure mean, 11 users are not aware
> of? Or does this mean, just 11 of 89 users wish to see Tramp?

The problem is that everybody started to mark and add features at different 
points.  I wouldn't really worry whether this represents actual usage for a 
default enabled feature.  I didn't increase tramp (I think) and it probably 
wasn't even on the list when I voted.  But I'm a regular tramp user.

The format of the survey is not really optimal.  I guess a better way would 
have been to use a piece of elisp to collect the data.  Similar to what the 
org-mode folks did in their survey.  But anyway the survey is probably good 
enough to consider the first 5 to 10 data points.  Which is probably all that 
matters for the actual question at hand.

I'd say the survey suggests that `column-number-mode' and `show-paren-mode' 
(maybe `recentf-mode') should be enabled as default.  `ido-mode' is popular 
but changes the behaviour to drastically to be a default imo.

Regards,
Rüdiger