Subject: Re: bug#9248: 23.2; Welcome screen

From: Antoine Levitt <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 06 Aug 2011 19:39:33 +0200

06/08/11 17:13, Vijay Lakshminarayanan
> [email-masked]
> (Jean-Marc Fran=e7ois) writes:
>
>> When starting emacs with a filename as a command line parameter, the
>> "Welcome to GNU Emacs" screen is displayed along the buffer that
>> displays the content of the said file.  I guess you consider it a
>> "feature", but please be aware that I find it very annoying.  Is it wise
>> to set this as the default?
>>
>> Best,
>> JM
>>
>
> [snip]
>
> FWIW, I agree that this is a bug.  I don't encounter the OP's scenario
> often (emacsclient FTW) but the times I do, the welcome screen is
> extremely annoying.  (Typically I encounter said scenario when I need to
> sudo edit some file and obviously emacs is the only choice.)

I also agree. The splash screen itself is fine (can be quite easily
disabled, with pointers on how to it), but it makes less sense to
display it when emacs is invoked with a filename (or maybe display it
only the first time, or add a very visible direct link to disable it, or
something).

FWIW, what I do find incredibly obnoxious and patronizing are the
safeguards around inhibit-startup-screen and
inhibit-startup-echo-area-message. Trying to forbid system
administrators to inhibit the splash screen in such a petty way is just
wrong. Another grip I have with the splash screen is the "one component
of the GNU/Linux operating system." being displayed on linux boxes, and
"one component of the GNU operating system." on other OSes. This is
wrong on many levels, but there's no use talking about it so I'll just
shut up and stop ranting now.