Re: Default behaviour of RET.

[Jarek Czekalski]

Some of the problems seem to be agreed, like retaining 2 different 
behaviours. But whether to choose a more popular solution - it requires 
a philosophical background.

You need to choose whether Emacs should remain a weird editor for geeks 
who do everything in the opposite way or whether it should be better 
approachable for new users. When I gave a shot at Emacs 2 years ago, I 
quit in a matter of seconds. Not having shift-selection was enough for 
me to bury Emacs. If you don't get fresh users, the editor may gradually 
become less popular. Am I right guessing that the average age of Emacs 
users is greater than of any other editor? So it may be called "getting 
old". We don't like if a nation is getting old, so I think we should not 
like an editor getting old too. Users must be drawn to draw developers. 
New blood, alternation of generations.

So more generally I would stick to the following rule: do everything 
like others do, unless there are serious reasons to do it differently.

A small non-counting voice on the RET behaviour from Emacs newbie: don't 
connect it with the electric-mode. I don't like indentation changes at 
any other moment except: on demand, for newline. I want new RET behavior 
without electric-mode. I would simply edit all modes. Personally I use 
<ret> for newline-and-indent and <S-ret> for newline.

Jarek