Re: reducing defface redundancy

[Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>]

    Can you say why you think this?  I think it gets about as close as we
    can to `doing the intuitive thing' when a someone uses the simple face
    customization -- it's really impossible to always do things correctly,
    since we'd have to read the user's mind.

The user who operates at that level won't be shown, and may not know,
at which level the various attributes were specified.  If person
changes two attributes, and one change affects all terminals while the
other does not, that will be a surprise.

Here is an idea.  Let's eliminate the concept of nested or "common"
attribute specs, and make the list look like a simple cond.  However,
the face to inherit from should be unconditional.  Thus, when you want
common attributes for face A in various conditions, you put them in
another face B and make A inherit from B.

This way, either all the attributes specified directly in face A are
general or all are specific to a particular kind of terminal.  Thus,
customizing A is a simple matter, and its behavior is clear.

In terms of the actual features of defface, this is almost a return to
the way it was a year ago.  However, using the inheritance we can get
the effect of nesting of specifications.