sb> The basic question as Martin has raised it to me in sb> conversation over the phone, is why do all the defaults suck? One reason, I think, is that it's tedious to work on checking them all and get them consistent (first) and appealing (better). Another is that not all values are available on all machines (default font is Courier; I happen to like Lucidatypewriter myself, but the init file explicitly says too few machines have it, but all have Courier). But that's the wrong question, I think. Because all the defaults are preferred by somebody! Otherwise "last patch" would have already won. There isn't a consensus on the definition of "suck." So the first question is "do we need a definition of 'suck'?" I think we do; the more consistent the XEmacs interface is, the more appealing it will be (other things being equal). The second question is, "who is the generic 'Jane User' who decides what 'suck' means?" I dunno. sb> I *know* I'm going to hate the consensus, but if there are sb> fewer people who hate the defaults the result will be sb> positive. Why do you think there's going to be a consensus? My expectation is that there are going to be several candidates for "Jane User". If they are (individually) coherent enough, and reasonably few, maybe we should look into "defaults themes". Not just faces (as has already been proposed), but zemacs-regions and the yet-to-be-named-or-implemented disabling of push-mark. So you'd have "Happy-Happy-Windows" for that gentle transition from MS Edit and "Kyles-Tocatta-and-Fugue" for those who prefer that every keystroke be an occasion for an in-depth excursion into Info. How about an xemacs-dotemacs write-only mailing list? :-) If there are only two, then we can have a massive flamewar over which is going to be hard-coded as defaults and which is going to be enshrined as sample.emacs. But I think that unlikely. I think I've identified at least three likely camps already: Kyle's, Happy-Happy-Windows (a caricature of the reasonable position that "anything that encourages more people to try XEmacs is good"), and the Hrvoje-Steve-Didier "`beginning of-buffer' doing `push-mark' just ain't logical" group. Assuming that the third camp doesn't break apart when we start discussing say zmacs-regions.... If that fragmentation proceeds ad infinitum, then yes, you'll hate the compromise. But you wouldn't be able to call it "consensus." sb> `xemacs -vanilla' stinks. If there is anyone who can stand sb> editing in an `xemacs -vanilla' environment for any time If the alternative is pico or a Motif textarea? `xemacs -vanilla' ain't so bad for editing. ;-) A quick check of my own .emacs shows very little that isn't package-, site-, or user- specific initializations (by which I mean stuff that doesn't have a sensible default besides `nil', like `vm-spool-files'). Not many customizations of XEmacs itself, although some packages (eg, supercite) are extensively customized. -- University of Tsukuba Tennodai 1-1-1 Tsukuba 305-8573 JAPAN Institute of Policy and Planning Sciences Tel/fax: +1 (298) 53-5091 __________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________ What are those two straight lines for? "XEmacs rules."

[ Carrying on with my last message which fled a bit too soon...] As you have probably figured out by now, I LIKE EMACS. There isn't much I want to change about it. I agree with the idea that there isn't a single user that the defaults are written for. Mostly we try to not inflict permanent confusion/harm upon users while they learn. Beyond that, it's guesswork and the semi-mystical art of design, because users arrive with so many biases from past experiences.

sb> Um, no holds barred, please feel free to flame away. Under X after 'xrdb -load /dev/null ; /usr/bin/xemacs -vanilla &', Pyrenean-pre6 seems to wrap lines at 79 characters with the glyph in position 80 so that 80 character lines wrap. How about making the default contain 80 characters without wrapping (geometry 81x40)? If you want to make up some of the width perhaps defaulting the scrollBarWidth to something like 9 might be considered. jam