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

From: Stefan Kangas <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 24 Oct 2021 07:10:19 -0700

Lars Ingebrigtsen <[email-masked]> writes:

>> 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.
>
> Well, it's the default default location, isn't it?

The default is ".emacs.el", if this text from (info "(emacs) Find Init")
is correct:

     Emacs looks for your init file using the filenames ‘~/.emacs.el’,
     ‘~/.emacs’, or ‘~/.emacs.d/init.el’ in that order; you can choose
     to use any one of these names. [...] Emacs can also look in an
     XDG-compatible location for ‘init.el’, the default is the directory
     ‘~/.config/emacs’.

> But saying "current" here is very odd -- it's probably meant as opposed
> to "historical", but why should the person reading this text care?  Why
> not just say
>
>        For brevity the rest of the Emacs documentation generally uses
>        ‘~/.emacs.d/init.el’ for the init file.

I guess because that's not the convention we actually use.  :-)
We say ".emacs" everywhere.  AFAICT, the only place we even mention
"~/.emacs.d/init.el" in the manual is this node (!).

That's why I proposed to change "current" to "historical", but the word
"traditional" is also good IMO.