Re: Finding packages to enable by default

[Stefan Monnier]

> I did some manual filtering as a test and here are some of the top packages
> which remained:

> (ido . 137)
> (uniquify . 136)
> (imenu . 114)
> (eldoc . 113)
> (ispell . 107)
> (flyspell . 91)
> (recentf . 90)
> (saveplace . 77)
> (yasnippet . 75)
> (windmove . 70)
> (auto-complete . 66)
> (delsel . 64)
> (paredit . 49)
> (iswitchb . 46)
> (savehist . 43)
> (linum . 38)
> (icomplete . 34)
> (winner . 34)
> (hippie-exp . 32)
> (ibuffer . 29)
> ...

Great, thanks.  `uniquify' is now enabled by default.
`ido' is rather problematic because it's a very different interface with
incompatible key-bindings and it is not a superset of the current
default completion UI.

> Ido is at the top (iswitchb is also here) and ido/isiwtchb would really
> make a much better first impression for new users than the default
> very barebone buffer switching.

Iswitchb is marked obsolete in the trunk: you can get the same
functionality with icomplete-mode.  So you can increase the count of
`icomplete-mode' for all users who have enabled iswitchb without
enabling icomplete-mode.

The plan for "ido by default" is rather to slowly make ido obsolete by
adding the corresponding functionality either in the default completion
UI or in icomplete-mode.
An alternative is to try and re-implement it on top of the current
completion UI.  To a large extent, it boils down to the same.

> Of course, this package measurement should be repeated with
> representative data, but even with the data acquired from bug reports
> it gives some ideas for packages which could be enabled by default.

Indeed.  But I think it can be a good starting point for discussions
about individual packages.


        Stefan