Subject: Re: bug#49424: 27.2; Misdocumented default initialisation file

From: Peter Oliver <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 7 Jul 2021 22:51:43 +0100 (BST)

On Wed, 7 Jul 2021, Eli Zaretskii wrote:

> This sentence
> explains that the rest of the documentation doesn't mention the logic
> of finding the init file under its various names, instead using just
> one possible name.  You changed that one name without changing the
> rest of the documentation -- what does that achieve?

It turns out that the rest of the documentation already refers to ~/.emacs, not ~/.emacs.d/init.el.

> Stepping back a notch, the original report was:
>
>  The info page “49.4.4 How Emacs Finds Your Init File” says:
>
>  > For brevity the rest of the Emacs documentation generally uses just
>  > the current default location ‘~/.emacs.d/init.el’ for the init file.
>
>  However, this seems to be inaccurate: if I start Emacs as a new user
>  and make a customisation, that customisation is written to ~/.emacs.
>
> How can a simplifying convention in a manual be "inaccurate"?  And
> what does that convention have to do with the order and logic of how
> Emacs actually looks for the init file?

I understand the sentence to be making two assertions:

1. Throughout the documentation, “~/.emacs.d/init.el” will be used as a shorthand for “the initialisation file”, whatever filename that happens to have.
2. The default location of the initialisation file is “~/.emacs.d/init.el”.

Neither is true.

-- 
Peter Oliver