Re: Suggest installer optionally set ALTERNATE_EDITOR

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Cc: help-emacs-windows@gnu.org
> From: Joel Reicher <joel.reicher@gmail.com>
> Date: Tue, 26 Apr 2022 23:48:44 +1000
> 
> Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:
> 
> > The above is perfectly OK as your personal preferences.  But I'm not
> > at all sure they should be the default behavior.
> 
> I'm not suggesting they should be the default; I believe this should be an 
> *option* in the installer.

Sorry for my misunderstanding.

However, in that case, why just those few?  Emacs is full of
potentially useful opt-in features that we could suggest as part of
the installation.  Some of those specifically target MS-Windows.  As
just one example, why not suggest to turn on w32-use-native-image-API?
that will allow people to be able to display several image formats
without installing additional libraries.

IOW, if we are to think about offering optional behavior, the list of
potentially useful settings is much longer than just those few you
mention, and now my question would be: why only those?

> In terms of other platforms, I think you might be implying there aren't 
> significant cultural differences. If so, I believe that's a mistake. My 
> assessment is that Windows users are accustomed to graphical shells, UNIX 
> users are accustomed to xterm and window managers, and in all honesty I can't 
> speak for Linux users.

First, I believe this view of users of Unix and GNU/Linux systems as
less GUI-oriented than Windows users is outdated.  Nowadays, with most
popular Unix desktop environments having stolen every possible aspect
of Windows look-and-feel (as if there's no other good GUI concept
under the sun), users expect to see the same graphical shells on all
systems.

In any case, Emacs always strives to provide as uniform experience as
possible on all platforms, for the benefit of those of us who work in
several different ones and those who may one day change their main
systems.  I would hate to see that change significantly.  Cultural
differences do exist, but using Emacs is a culture in itself, and at
least IME it is nice to have a large part of your development
environment remain virtually unchanged, and thus as familiar as it
gets, when you move between platforms.