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by technomancy 5116 days ago
Author of the Starter Kit here.

For what it's worth, I've come around to this viewpoint. I rewrote ESK for version 2, and the emphasis was on packaging as much functionality in independent packages as possible. So as of v2, the Starter Kit is mostly just about providing a default set of packages and turning on a few flags that it's just crazy to leave off (like ido). But this way more of the functionality is available to everyone, not just users of ESK.

Anyway, it certainly needs more documentation, but these days I recommend the Starter Kit more as a source of inspiration than something people should just use outright, at least if they're not in a hurry.
1 comments
gringomorcego 5116 days ago
Thank you so much for ESK! It's really helped me get started in emacs. Also, could you think about adding undo-tree as a default for ESK? I really feel like that would be a worthy addition.
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technomancy 5116 days ago
Glad you like it. I think rather than further development on the Starter Kit, effort would be better spent towards coming up with a good overview of the ecosystem, documenting available packages and how they work together.
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drothlis 5115 days ago
And pushing improvements (like saner defaults, and documentation for some of the under-documented built-in packages) upstream to Emacs itself.

For those reasonably comfortable with Emacs, I think you should build it from source, and get into the habit of fixing tiny documentation problems as soon as you come across them. Mind you, I have submitted a couple such patches to the ido built-in help and they have languished un-noticed for 2 months.

P.S. Another thank-you here for the starter kit -- I no longer use it, but I did for a year or so and it did teach me several features I wouldn't have known about otherwise.

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technomancy 5115 days ago
Pushing upstream is absolutely the best way to get things more widely used, but unfortunately changes to the defaults often get strong pushback from long-time users. It's a very politicized process; if improving Emacs itself were easier the Starter Kit never would have existed.
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