Re: patch to hilight-chg not in emacs 22.1

[Richard Sharman <rsharman@pobox.com>]

On 18-Mar-08, at 12:51 PM, Stefan Monnier wrote:

>>>> So,  I have simplified the change to hilit-chg.el and have  
>>>> removed the
>>>> part
>>>> that required the change to easy-mmode.  (I think what I was   
>>>> previously
>>>> doing was overkill anyway.)
>>>
>>> Thank you, this looks good.  I'd only advise you to rename
>>> highlight-changes-toggle-visibility to highlight-changes-visible- 
>>> mode
>>> and define it (yet again) with define-minor-mode.
>
>> So, if I understand it,  you are suggesting having two minor modes:
>> highlight-changes-mode and highlight-changes-visible-mode?  Isn't   
>> that
>> going to be a bit confusing??
>
>> If highlight-changes-mode were on then the meaning of the new mode is
>> straight forward,  but if it were off should it just toggle the  
>> flag  and
>> otherwise have no effect?  So it affects highlight changes mode   
>> either
>> immediately if that mode is on otherwise the next time it is   
>> turned on?
>> I can try and it see what it's like.
>
> In what way are those problems different if the command is named
> "highlight-changes-toggle-visibility" and implemented without
> define-minor-mode?

Yes,  I agree it's the same thing in code.  But I still think that  
people will find it confusing.
Originally, the highlight-change-mode function had the ability to  
also set active and passive states (when enabling the mode) and RMS  
thought it would be more consistent to have the function purely  
toggle the mode on or off.    My reaction to having two related modes  
was that it would be confusing but I'm not really averse to it.

Richard