GNU bug report logs - #16155
electric indent gripes

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Message #42 received at submit <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Drew Adams <drew.adams <at> oracle.com>
To: Josh <josh <at> foxtail.org>
Cc: gnu-emacs-bug <at> moderators.isc.org, Alan Mackenzie <acm <at> muc.de>, rms <at> gnu.org,
 Stefan Monnier <monnier <at> iro.umontreal.ca>
Subject: RE: bug#16155: 24.3.50;
Date: Tue, 17 Dec 2013 16:54:00 -0800 (PST)

> > And yet none of that data (however flakey or incomplete) was
> > considered in deciding to make this change in default behavior.
> 
> To be fair, this was debated at some length[0] and presumably
> decided a couple of months ago, well before that data became
> available.
> 
> [0] https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2013-10/msg00407.html

"To be fair", I already said that this was decided before
that poll was taken.  That was the main point: it was decided
without benefit of any poll or automatically gathered data.

If it had been decided after the wiki "poll", my guess is
that there would be even fewer than 10% of the users reporting
there that they use `electric-indent-mode'.  Since this has
been turned on by default for the duration of that "poll",
one would expect more people to report it being (left) on.
(Of course, many users do not use development builds, which
works in the other direction.)

But it's not too late to solicit user input and take it into
account, as Richard pointed out.

FWIW, I read (and participated in) the thread you cite.  In
particular, I mentioned then that there is a use for a
simple just-insert-a-newline key binding, regardless of which
key that might be.  (Some had suggested that there was no
need for this.)  I said that I do sometimes use only `RET'
(now it is `C-j'), to just insert a newline.  (Why that use
case was not obvious to some people, I don't know.)

I disagree with the need for this default key swap, and the
possible benefit to Emacs from it.  But I do not feel strongly
about that at all, as I said in that thread.  It's not a big
deal for a user to turn the mode off.

I feel somewhat more strongly that the process followed is
not the best one (insufficient attention to users - and not
just emacs-devel readers).  And I feel more strongly that the
change is not well documented.  That is the thing to correct,
at this point.  That, and trying better wrt the process.

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