From: Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>
To: Gregory Heytings <gregory@heytings.org>
Cc: 57499-done@debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: bug#57499: Documentation bug in the docstring of set-face-attribute?
Date: Thu, 01 Sep 2022 11:44:48 +0300 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <834jxrscu7.fsf@gnu.org> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <f61b9c2619aab1ad9813@heytings.org> (message from Gregory Heytings on Thu, 01 Sep 2022 08:25:35 +0000)
> Date: Thu, 01 Sep 2022 08:25:35 +0000
> From: Gregory Heytings <gregory@heytings.org>
> cc: 57499@debbugs.gnu.org
>
> >> I just want to make it as clear as possible that to get that special
> >> value `unspecified' one should use the symbol 'unspecified.
> >
> > We have gazillions of such situations everywhere in Emacs where symbol
> > values are documented, and we never say anything beyond the name of the
> > symbol with proper quoting.
>
> For some reason this situation seems different (from a user point of
> view), give that the same question pops again and again. Why is adding
> such a note a problem?
Because we don't say anything like that anywhere else.
> And when one calls
>
> (set-face-attribute 'isearch t :background 'unspecified)
>
> this is what is happening:
>
> (internal-set-lisp-face-attributes 'isearch :background 'unspecified t)
>
> So this call is already included in the previous one. Why should we tell
> users to add such a redundant call in their code?
The new text doesn't say the call with FRAM = t should be an
additional call.
> As far as I understand, the actual and real problem here is some users use
> nil when they should use 'unspecified, because they are not aware that nil
> and 'unspecified are subtly different. The subtle difference is that
> using nil works for frame = #<frame-1> ... #<frame-n>, but does not work
> with frame = t.
That is a backward-compatibility feature that I don't want to mention
in the doc string. Lisp programs should only use valid values that
are documented in the doc string.
> > When a new frame is created, attribute values in the FACE's `defspec'
> > normally override the `unspecified' values in the FACE's default
> > attributes. To avoid that, i.e. to cause ATTRIBUTE's value be reset to
> > `unspecified' when creating new frames, disregarding what the FACE's
> > face spec says, call this function with FRAME set to t and the
> > ATTRIBUTE's value set to `unspecified'.
>
> See above: I really don't understand why the 'unspecified value should be
> detailed as if it were different from the other values, when in fact it
> isn't. The real and actual problem here is that users are confused by the
> fact that a nil value for an attribute is equivalent to an 'unspecified
> value for existing frames, but is not equivalent to 'unspecified for new
> frames.
I give up. I've installed the last text I proposed, and I'm closing
this bug with that.
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2022-09-01 8:44 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 31+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2022-08-31 8:14 bug#57499: Documentation bug in the docstring of set-face-attribute? Gregory Heytings
2022-08-31 8:17 ` Gregory Heytings
2022-08-31 11:11 ` Eli Zaretskii
2022-08-31 12:04 ` Gregory Heytings
2022-08-31 12:39 ` Eli Zaretskii
2022-08-31 12:53 ` Gregory Heytings
2022-08-31 13:06 ` Eli Zaretskii
2022-08-31 13:43 ` Gregory Heytings
2022-08-31 16:11 ` Eli Zaretskii
2022-08-31 18:33 ` Gregory Heytings
2022-08-31 19:13 ` Eli Zaretskii
2022-08-31 19:33 ` Gregory Heytings
2022-08-31 19:49 ` Eli Zaretskii
2022-08-31 21:13 ` Gregory Heytings
2022-09-01 7:04 ` Eli Zaretskii
2022-09-01 8:25 ` Gregory Heytings
2022-09-01 8:44 ` Eli Zaretskii [this message]
2022-09-01 9:02 ` Gregory Heytings
2022-09-01 11:33 ` Eli Zaretskii
2022-09-01 11:56 ` Gregory Heytings
2022-09-01 12:08 ` Eli Zaretskii
2022-09-01 13:15 ` Gregory Heytings
2022-09-01 14:56 ` Eli Zaretskii
2022-09-01 17:07 ` Gregory Heytings
2022-09-01 18:24 ` Eli Zaretskii
2022-09-01 19:35 ` Gregory Heytings
2022-09-02 16:00 ` Eli Zaretskii
2022-09-02 20:48 ` Gregory Heytings
2022-09-03 6:00 ` Eli Zaretskii
2022-09-03 6:43 ` Gregory Heytings
2022-09-03 1:26 ` Po Lu via Bug reports for GNU Emacs, the Swiss army knife of text editors
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