> One thing I don't understand: It seems that GUI and terminal modes are > completely different. Rather than constrain GUI defaults to terminal > limitations, it makes sense to gracefully degrade them when a terminal > is detected. I assume that terminal users don't care about variable > pitch. They're likely doing sysadmin, with little or no prose > interaction.
Personally, I run emacs in daemon mode, and often have both GUI and terminal emacsclients connected to the same session. So I like to have settings that work well in both. I agree terminal users typically won't want variable pitch, but disagree that they are generally doing sysadmin -- I know users who use org-mode for their notes, but prefer to use emacs in the terminal. Speaking to my own preferences -- I prefer fixed-width for editing text, whether it's prose or code. For example, if I execute a command to move the cursor down 10 lines, I like to know where my cursor is going to end up. Fixed-width also works better for certain editing commands, such as rectangle commands. I am not sure what the majority preference is here, but it would be interesting to know, and also how it distributes across old-timers and newcomers. Ideally, it should be easy to accommodate all preferences, with a small amount of configuration and easily discoverable documentation.
