Re: Face color changes

[Miles Bader <miles@gnu.org>]

On Wed, Dec 29, 2004 at 04:26:14PM +0100, Alex Schroeder wrote:
> This sounds a lot like overengineering to me.  Assume an innocent user
> who takes his face definitions from one system to the next.  Depending
> on what kind of system it is, his faces will either look like what he
> customized them, or it will look like the default definitions for that
> kind of system.
...
> In my opinion, we don't need to change anything.

It seems that it's hard to do perfectly without using "show all display
specs" -- whether it  changes only the current spec, or overwrites
everything, it's probably going to screw up half the time.

However, I've definitely been burned by the current rather destructive
behavior.  I'll carefully customize several different specs (say tty and
default), and then _once_ I'll forget to use show-all-display-specs when
tweaking some minor detail, and -- whoops! -- all my other customizations
will be lost.

Perhaps a good method might be this: Default to show-all-display-specs _if_
the user has changed anything; if a face is still completely defaulted, just
show the current environment's spec case (as it does now).  That way, the
first time the user customizes a face, it will overwrite all specs for that
face with a single case, applying in all environments.  If he later wants to
change something, it will show all display specs, but that will be almost the
same as not doing so, because there will only be the single default entry due
to his previous customization.  If he later adds a new display-spec case
(which will be easy, as the "add case" widget will already be active), it
will then be displayed and shown for subsequent customizations, but that will
presumably not be too confusing, as all specs shown will have been added by
the user.

Since on average, such behavior would be almost the same as the current
behavior, this wouldn't be a drastic change either.

-Miles
-- 
Is it true that nothing can be known?  If so how do we know this?  -Woody Allen