Re: 23.0.60; Feature request: Menu item "load init files" after -q/-Q

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@xemacs.org>]

Eli Zaretskii writes:

 > > when XEmacs is started with `--vanilla' or `-q', it displays an item
 > > "Load init files" in the menu bar.  The name of the command in XEmacs
 > > is `load-user-init-file'.
 > > 
 > > Maybe Emacs should do have something similar.

The common use case for this feature is a user reports a bug, we ask
them to replicate with "xemacs -vanilla", and now they have error
messages and stuff in buffers.  So they hit the "Send Mail" menu item
and get the horrible default MUA when they were expecting Gnus or VM.

An "in-your-face" button makes it easy to get these users to a
semblance of sanity, where they can comfortably compose mail, copy
buffers, make attachments, etc, in the comfort of their home
customizations.

 > If a non-trivial .emacs is loaded after Emacs starts, the effect might
 > be different from the same .emacs loaded at startup, due to the stage
 > of the startup sequence where .emacs is normally loaded. This could
 > surprise users,

You're right about the logic, but I've never heard of such a problem in
10 years of reading XEmacs lists daily.

 > unless we write a special load function that takes care of these
 > subtleties.

In XEmacs, basically the only things that happen after loading the
init files are (1) defvar'ing the user's mail address to a computed
default, (2) putting text into the scratch buffer, and (3) running
after-init-hook (these are not necessarily in order, but they're
almost certainly independent).  (Note that "load-user-init-file" is a
misnomer in that default.el gets loaded too, unless the user
suppresses it.)

If the init files tromp on the mail address when loaded out of order,
that's almost surely a good thing.  Text in the scratch buffer is not
of interest here.  So to protect the user, all you really need to do
is warn them if after-init-hook is non-nil.

YMMV; Mike Sperber has done a full-body-replacement on our startup.el,
so I suspect the resemblence to any Emacs version is now nil.