Re: Default Emacsen configuration on Debian?
Romain Francoise wrote:
What would people think of making emacsen-common provide a default Emacs
init file in /etc/skel that would enable Font Lock mode and Transient
Mark mode? I think very few new users wouldn't want them, and even if
they do they could either remove the default ~/.emacs.el file, or
comment out these options.
Thoughts?
This is discouraged by the Policy Manual, section 10.7.5, and with good
reason: For many (most?) people, their user account is created *before* the
installation of emacsen-common, so the init file won't make it to their home
directory. If emacsen-common is to provide a default init file, it should
probably rather be a system-wide one, i.e. /etc/emacs/default.el. However,
that has a serious drawback as well:
Users have to put "(setq inhibit-default-init t)" in their .emacs to change
anything that's set in default.el. I can imagine the following scenario:
The Emacs newbie disables Transient Mark mode via the "Options" menu, saves
his options, restarts Emacs -- and wonders why the option apparently wasn't
saved (overridden by the default.el, but will he find out that?!).
Therefore, I think emacsen-common should not ship an init file. New users can
enable Font Lock mode and Transient Mark mode easily enough via the "Options"
menu (assuming they run Emacs under X, which every newbie should do!).
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