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

From: Stefan Kangas <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 24 Oct 2021 01:12:49 -0700

Eli Zaretskii <[email-masked]> writes:

>> 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.
>
> The 2nd one is not what that sentence says.

This is the text under discussion:

       For brevity the rest of the Emacs documentation generally uses just
    the current default location ‘~/.emacs.d/init.el’ for the init file.

The sentence says: "the current default location ‘~/.emacs.d/init.el’".
I can't interpret this in any other way than that this is the default
location.  This is, as we know, incorrect.

> If the 1st one is incorrect, it should be fixed to reflect the truth.

The proposed fix here was to change it to say:

       For brevity the rest of the Emacs documentation generally uses just
    the current default location ‘~/.emacs’ for the init file.

That is incidentally also the convention we have used historically, and
what you will find all over the documentation.  However, this is also
not entirely correct, as the default will differ depending on the
details discussed in `(emacs) Find Init'.  So I would suggest this
simple change instead:

       For brevity the rest of the Emacs documentation generally uses just
    the historical default location ‘~/.emacs’ for the init file.

As for the rest of this bug report, there is some discussion about:

A) Inadequacies in the Info node `(emacs) Find Init'.
B) Further changes to how we load the init file.

As for A, I think the text is fine as is.  As for B, I agree with Eli
that we should let the dust settle on the recent changes for a while
before doing anything more.