Re: default bg color on ttys

[Robert J. Chassell]

   > It is easier to explain to a novice how to start a working Emacs on
   > their (most likely misconfigured) system by giving them a command line
   > option ...

   My impression from reading gnu.emacs.help seems to suggest otherwise: 
   most of the newbies there expect to be told about a command or a line to 
   put into .emacs, not a command-line option.  This is especially true for 
   colors.

The people who ask questions of gnu.emacs.help  are already much more
knowledgeable than the people I am speaking of.  I am sure you are
right about this latter group.  

   > Also, it is a matter of first impressions:  what comes across as
   > easier for a novice, potential Microsoft Windows migrant to use?

   MS-Windows migrants don't know what command-line arguments are.  

Well, the people I have been dealing with the past few weeks had got
far enough (or at least their system administrators had) to understand
a command line.  The problem was, they did not know Emacs.

I agree that MS-Windows migrants other than this group
will

   ... expect any changes from the default appearance to be done from
   the menu bar's Options menu.

My point is, set things up so that when the initial set up is wrong,
it is not hard to right it.  Hence the command line options.

Ideally, the default configuration should lead to a useable Emacs that
can then be customized readily by novices.  But this does not always
happen.  I would not harp on this, but it happened to me in the last
two weeks while visiting two countries.

-- 
    Robert J. Chassell                  address@hidden
    Rattlesnake Enterprises             http://www.rattlesnake.com