E.g. if you start with a brand new emacs then you could paste a line into scratch, eval it, and then these question would come up, you give answers and then an emacs file is generated, written, evalled and you get your configured emacs instantly.
But of course a web interface also has its advantages, it's prettier than barebones emacs,so it's more appealing to config there.
That being said, the screenshots get in the way so it isn't that great (ironically emacs -nw appears to work better). But a long term goal is to find a way in which the configuration options could be detached from the configuration generator, as mentioned in the last section here: http://amodernist.com/texts/ecg.html. An alternative could also be to have the configuration generator generate an Elisp script, that could be evaluated and used in Emacs itself.
The reason that I decided to implement this for the browser first, is that the interface is probably more familiar, especially if someone has had no experience with Emacs before.
First, Emacs should have sensible defaults like Ctrl-c for copying and Ctrl-v for pasting.
Second, there should be a menu item to choose among particular setups. A new user shouldn't have to go through the less-than-fun process of installing a bunch of stuff to get a common sense setup.
Emacs has a loyal user base, and changing to having cua-mode as the default would likely anger most, if not all of them. I highly doubt that the number of long-term users gained by the change would be even remotely significant.
This sums up well the gigantic hurdles Emacs faces as it attempts to stay relevant over the next 20 years. We're talking about a single keyboard shortcut to switch back to legacy mode.
It's only when you stop looking at growing absolute user numbers and instead get into percentage, is when you reach a conclusion like Emacs is struggling to stay relevant. That's like saying Lamborghini is struggling to stay relevant because of Toyota or something.
My point was that making the default cua-mode won't lead to a significant number of new long-term users, so it isn't worth the hassle it would create for people who are already using it.
Also, emacs is not struggling to stay relevant. I fully expect that it will appeal to an audience of users similar to the one it appeals to today for decades to come.
Except that would break a ton of existing commands, since ctrl-c is use as a prefix for a bunch of stuff already.
You'd be making it hard for someone who already knows Emacs to use it. It shouldn't be a problem on personal machines, since you can override the defaults. But if you ssh into a server and need to use emacs, it would be problematic.
Also, on macOS, cmd+c and cmd+v work be default.
It would be a burden for a longtime user to have to enter one keyboard shortcut to move into legacy mode? As opposed to making it weird and difficult for everyone else and then watching Emacs die.
New users should not be recommended to use barebones emacs, because it's too alien. They should use a nicely preconfigured system instead.
Whoa. Long-time user and I had no idea.