Re: Two problems with directory-local variables

[Juri Linkov <juri@linkov.net>]

> I don't think there's a good design for this. Whatever some designer's intention
> beforehand might be, the result will be misleading in at least some contexts.
>
> And the problem is that when it's misleading (showing some dots but not
> others it can be even more confusing for users than consistently doing either
> what we do now - no dots for a list cdr, at all levels - or adding dots at all levels.
>
> I think (so far, but I might change my mind if I see a good argument) that this
> is really something that users of Lisp just have to get used to. It can be a
> gotcha - like getting used to quoting (when to quote and when not to). Lisp
> has a few such gotchas.
>
> We could I suppose have `print-dot-levels', like we have `print-level', to give
> code control over the level (top-down). That might be a little better than
> `print-dotted' (Boolean). But is it really worth it (needed)? I tend not to
> think it's worth it to have just a top-level `print-alist', in any case (and the
> alist might not be at top level).
>
> As Stefan said, "only the human coder can know which cons cell should be
> printed dotted and which shouldn't." I'd change "cell" to "cells", but
> otherwise I pretty much agree.

The root cause of the problem is requiring the alist value to be stored
in the CDR that prints with confusing dotted syntax especially bad for
hand-editing, instead of storing the value in the CAR of the CDR printed
with simpler list syntax.