[4195] in testers
Re: emacs startup
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (John Hawkinson)
Mon Jun 7 00:27:17 1999
Date: Mon, 7 Jun 1999 00:27:10 -0400 (EDT)
Message-Id: <199906070427.AAA27753@x15-cruise-basselope.mit.edu>
To: Greg Hudson <ghudson@MIT.EDU>
Cc: testers@MIT.EDU
In-Reply-To: "[4058] in testers"
From: John Hawkinson <jhawk@MIT.EDU>
I'd like to add in my vote that having *scratch* default to
Text auto-filled is a mistake.
While I'd been aware that it was text mode, I didn't realize it was
auto-fill mode. I talked to a user who was confused and annoyed by the
behavior on the phone, which is what jogged my to investigate.
The problem is that if a user opens up emacs and starts typing in the
scratch buffer, and then saves it as a file (C-x C-w presumably), then
if they edit that file again, they'll get different behavior. Most
users won't miss the features of Text mode, but auto-fill is rather notable.
This seems inappropriate.
The "stock emacs" -type answer is that, of course, that users should
not save the *scratch* buffer, and this is encouraged by making it
Lisp Interaction, where you don't really want to type things other
than lisp expressions, and not a text buffer.
I can't seem to find the discussion that I know took place in '96 or '97
about why this answer was chosen.
<shrug>
--jhawk
