Re: New year - Out with the old!

[novim]

> Everyone new to Emacs finds how different it is.  That can be like

> discovering a new continent.  For some, it's marvelous.  For others,

> it's just primitive, populated by savages, a decaying culture, or is

> just no longer relevant.  For some, it's a mix.

The question is: what is the goal?

Is it getting Emacs used by more people, so the ideals of free

software reaches more people? Or is it keeping it as is, a niche tool

which free software enthusiast can discover if they want to?

If the former then the problem is emacs is very alien for new users

compared to popular software, so it takes a great deal of

determination to push through and discover the strengths of emacs.

Users usually complain about having to tinker for emacs quite a while

to get productive. It includes learning the keybindings and

configuring emacs for their usecases.  Many users are turned away by

this, because they don't have the time or inclination to tinker to get

basic stuff work, but they may stick with emacs if it's usable for

them right away and they could discover the strengths of emacs if they

keeep using it.

As for the keybindings emacs should have selectable keyboard configs

similar to other software, just like other tools have vim, emacs,

etc. key emulations. These configs should be selectable right from the

startup screen for a new user, so he can switch to familiar keys with

a simple click. Familiar keys include copy/paste and other keys

standard on the platform (e.g. on windows C-c, C-v). Of course, the

documentation uses the default keys when descripting commands, but I

can imagine a mode which replaces the displayed keys in the

documentation automatically with overlays if an other key config is

selected.

As for productivity many users complain they have to tinker to get

completion set up for their programming languages. This should be

built in, so, for example, for java, c++, etc. completion and

documentation lookup should work automatically out of the box, using

LSP.

All of the above is for the case the goal is to get more users for

emacs. If the goal is to have it as a powerful tool which rewards only

those who are willing to spend a significant time on it then things

are good as they are.