Re: Rewrite of zsh-newuser-install

[Marlon Richert <marlon.richert@xxxxxxxxx>]

> On 20. Feb 2021, at 2.30, dana <dana@xxxxxxx> wrote:
> Despite the title of the thread, i didn't actually expect that large of a
> change to zsh-newuser-install itself. I know from comments i've seen on-line
> that many people find the wizard overwhelming, but i don't have any evidence
> that specifically points to '[nobody] wants the questionnaire'. I'm fine with
> getting rid of it if the others want to, i just don't know myself.

While I have no quantifiable evidence for this particular case, it is a general principle of modern UX Design to give the user good defaults, which they then can change later, rather than present them with lots of choices upfront. This is backed up by actual, credible usability research. And I do have lots of anecdotal evidence that shell users prefer to just have a default config that they can edit manually.


> There are also some moving parts we haven't really even discussed, like how
> these changes will affect packagers. Are we going to get rid of the
> recommended-zshrc mechanism (option 2) that is used by Debian &al.?

I don’t know what is the “recommended-zshrc mechanism (option 2)”. How does that work?


> Or is this
> config going to co-exist with it? Or are we going to unify them somehow?
> 
> Should we consult with some down-stream maintainers on this?

Yes, I think that’s definitely a good idea. Is that just a matter of asking on their mailing lists?

Perhaps one idea would be to make this parametrizable a little, to make it easier for downstream maintainers to build their defaults on top of this. So, instead of presenting the users with lots of questions, we instead give the downstream maintainers an easy way to selectively override our suggested defaults.


> As for what's currently in the rewritten script... i wonder if it's really
> even necessary to ask every new user where they want to put their shell files.
> I don't have any evidence, but it seems like a high burden (having to read and
> answer the questions) compared to the amount of people who are actually going
> to feel strongly about it.

I would be fine with just using the XDG Base Dir spec for this, but not everyone seems to agree. Hence the question. It’s a compromise. :)