Re: Emacs 25.0.04: Feature Request: Make called-interactively-p's argument optional

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> From: John Wiegley <jwiegley@gmail.com>
> Date: Tue, 05 Jul 2016 17:31:26 -0700
> Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org
> 
> >>>>> Dmitry Gutov <dgutov@yandex.ru> writes:
> 
> > As the docstring explains, the function in question should be used rarely,
> > if at all. It should follow that the verbosity of its calling convention
> > can't be a significant problem.
> 
> If this is the case, I'm curious why this is an issue at all then. Bob, is
> really a problem that needs addressing, or is it just for infrequent
> convenience? If it's only the latter, let's leave this sleeping dog to lie.

IMO, if we want to make a rational decision that would make sense to
most everybody, we need first to define the problem.  After reading
this and past discussions, I'm still not sure what the problem(s)
is/are.  What's more, I'm not sure anyone else here understands the
actual problem(s) being brought up.  Large portions of the discussions
seem to be based on distant experiences, which I'm not sure is
relevant nowadays, and the problems are described very vaguely.  A
couple of times that an actual problem was reported (e.g., bug#21083),
it was promptly fixed, but I don't see any updated reports after it
was fixed, it seems people are still claiming the same claims
regardless of the fix.

So: what exactly is the problem?  Is it a convenience issue, or are
there some real problems in the recommended replacements for
'interactive-p' (such as 'called-interactively-p')?  Do we have
reproducible recipes for the problems the recommended practices
allegedly have?  If so, would someone please present these recipes
with the current versions of Emacs, preferably as bug reports?

I'd also ask Stefan to please summarize the reasons for deprecating
'interactive-p' and describe its recommended substitutes for the
popular use cases.

Armed with that knowledge, we can hopefully proceed with the subject:
fix the bugs, clarify the documentation, and make the decision whether
the recommended practices are viable or need some changes.