Re: position on changing defaults?

[Juri Linkov]

>   > > - show-paren-mode on by default
>   >
>   > Never liked it.  Is it really that popular?
>
> That's hard to measure, isn't it?  In _my_ experience it is.
> Or more likely: blink-matching-open is unpopular, and in general
> blinking cursor is downright hated by many people.

I always use M-( to insert a balanced pair of open and close
parentheses, so I never see that blink-matching-open jumping cursor.

When there is a need to see a matching parenthesis, this is possible by
using commands that move point on balanced expressions like forward-sexp.
Even though show-paren-mode doesn't require such point movements, it is
annoying when a matching parenthesis is highlighted in inappropriate
places like e.g. when displaying a group of completions in parenthesis
in the minibuffer, etc.

>   > > - iswitchb-mode on by default
>   >
>   > I'd rather improve the general completion mechanism, than only improve
>   > it for buffer selection.
>
> That would be great too.  But we also need to consider the fact iswitch
> is here now, it works and is useful, improvements to completion are not
> available yet (or even in the works?).

I agree with Stefan that the general completion mechanism should be
uniform among all minibuffer types, not only for switching between
buffers, and we should make such improvements to the general mechanism.

>   > > - flyspell-mode on by default for text-mode
>   >
>   > I indeed have it on in text-mode (and programming modes as well, as
>   > a matter of fact),
>
> Same here.
>
> Another related point: flyspell-prog-mode is even more obscure than
> flyspell.  How do we make it's availability more obvious to programmers?

Like all other features, to make them more available to users, we should
add more commands to the main menu.  Most newbies tend using this menu
where they can discover hidden features.

>   > but I haven't given any thought to enabling it by default.  I think
>   > it might be a bit too brittle currently to be enabled by default: it
>   > usually works just fine, but I've had problems with it every once in
>   > a while.
>
> I don't share that experience... How about we try it on and see if any
> problems show up? There's plenty of time to disable it again until the
> next release.

I think that before enabling flyspell-mode by default we should improve
the language detection mechanism, so it will set the correct ispell
dictionary in every buffer where flyspell-mode will be enabled.
Otherwise, it would be annoying to see most words in buffers
highlighted in red.

-- 
Juri Linkov
http://www.jurta.org/emacs/