Good, easy to use, upstream defaults for zsh (i.e. improving usability)

[Keir Mierle <mierle@xxxxxxxxx>]

Zsh is an amazing shell. I've used Zsh for years as my primary shell, and it
has treated me well.

With one problem.

Defaults. Or lack thereof. It is easy to claim that zsh is so customizable that
there cannot possibly be any set of defaults that will satisfy everyone. And
they would be correct. But it is incorrect to say that there cannot be a
default configuration that is superior to the current default, most of the
time, for the vast majority of people.

Ideas:

 * Make completions Just Work(TM) out of the box. I suggest common commands
   such as 'xpdf' or 'acroread' should complete only .pdf files, or tar only
   completing .gz or .bz2.

 * When completing commands, list them with one line help summaries from man
   pages, like the Friendly Interactive SHell does (fish).

 * Add colors or at least boldface to the default prompt. The reasoning behind
   this is straightforward--it seperates command output. It is very difficult
   to tell where the output of one grep finishes and the other starts without a
   colored prompt.

   The default prompt:
   howl%

   is not very useful.

   Something as straightforward as
   keir@howl:~/music %

   is much better, especially when it is in bold or colored.

 * Extremely controversial: make a 'extract' command that intelligently
   handles all sorts of file formats. There is one argument, that says it is
   not zsh's place to do this. There is another, that says this is something
   zsh could do trivially, is very common, exists in virtually everyone's
   .zshrc in one form or another, and could be done once, properly, for the
   last time, upstream. 

 * Extremely controversial: A set of default aliases.

   For example, everyone I know who uses zsh has 'll' bound to ls -l.  I
   suggest adding single letter aliases, 'l' for 'ls', 'p' for ps, or 'e' for
   edit (which invokes $EDITOR). There are many possibilities. What I am
   suggesting is to take action, make a decision, and make a useful set of
   default aliases.

   That's right, I'm suggesting taking a stand, and adding useful functionality
   to zsh that works out of the box. 

 * A good intro doc on using zsh interacitvely that goes over things it does
   differently from other shells, such as good completion or the above default
   aliases. The intro on the zsh website is ok, but it could use some work.

I have other ideas, but the main purpose of this email is to get a feel for
what the zsh developer community thinks about improving the default usability
of zsh.

It is important to note that I am *not* suggesting removing anything from zsh,
or removing any of the customizability-- only that great defaults would make
zsh more popular, more usable, and just plain better (for those who don't want
to spend hours tweaking their shell).

Good defaults benefit power users too, who no longer have to write their own
extract function, or add their own aliases for ls, ps, or whatever.

Thoughts?

Thanks,
Keir