bug#14696: 24.3.50; order of items in `custom-file' (or init file)

[Drew Adams <drew.adams@oracle.com>]

Enhancement request.

Currently, options and faces are sorted using `string<' when written to
your `custom-file'.  That can make it easy to find something in the
file, I suppose, but (a) you can alternatively and easily find an entry
using Isearch, and (b) you can always split a list in the file into
lines and sort the lines, if you really want to see such a sort order.

Is there some other reason to sort entries this way?

Alternatively, it could be more useful to put new and updated entries at
the head of the option and face lists.  That way, the lists would record
the update order (at least in some common cases, if not in all cases).

And that can help when you want to find something that you changed
recently.

The enhancement request would be to either:

1. (Preferably) timestamp each update or new entry, e.g., as part of the
entry itself or via a separate alist for all entries.

2. If not, do not sort entries using `string<', but just add then at the
head of each list (options, faces).

#1 would be more involved, but would be better (precise).  It would help
us create a command, for instance, that would let you find changes made
during any given time period etc.

(In effect, this would be a bit like providing automatic version control
for your custom file.)



In GNU Emacs 24.3.50.1 (i686-pc-mingw32)
 of 2013-06-20 on ODIEONE
Bzr revision: 113100 eliz@gnu.org-20130620173624-w9v620tog4yacftk
Windowing system distributor `Microsoft Corp.', version 6.1.7601
Configured using:
 `configure --prefix=/c/Devel/emacs/binary --enable-checking=yes,glyphs
 CFLAGS=-O0 -g3 LDFLAGS=-Lc:/Devel/emacs/lib
 CPPFLAGS=-Ic:/Devel/emacs/include'