Re: color-theme.el

[Alex Schroeder <alex@emacswiki.org>]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

> Are you saying that cus-theme.el is a simple implementation of this
> feature, and nothing more?

cus-theme.el is an implementation of this complex feature.  Every
customizable variable has a property has an alist that associates
themes with value like a history.

> If that's the case, then it does seem like this could be the code to
> use.  However, the other things that have been said about
> cus-theme.el give the impression that it is not so simple.

Well, cus-theme.el implements a complex feature.  I did not want to
argue against cus-theme.el because its implementation was byzantine.
I argued against cus-theme.el because it implements a feature that is
useless to most if not all users.

Other people such as Per seem to want this feature, and you offered an
idea to implement this feature.  If people want his feature, then
cus-theme.el is the way to go.  In fact, all other solutions will
eventually do what cus-theme.el already does.  Therefore I think
cus-theme.el is our best bet -- *if* we want this feature.

cus-theme.el will need some improvements eventually to be able to use
this feature to its fullest.  Integrating cus-theme.el will allow us
to build on it, improve it, and use it for applications such as
color-theme.el -- since I will switch to using cus-theme.el if and
only if it is integrated into Emacs.

Eventhough cus-theme.el is currently not perfect, it fails in ways
that custom generally fails already: alists (default-frame-alist and
friends in particular) are problematic, frame local variables are not
supported, the only user interface that allows users to create themes
without writing the elisp by hand is my make-theme, which is very
simple, and there is currently no user interface (except for calling
the relevant commands manually using M-x) to manage themes (installing
and deinstalling them).

> Dave, could you email me the cus-theme.el file that Alex sent you, so
> I can take a look for myself?

You will need all the other cus*.el files as well, because they are
all affected.  Remeber, all variables and faces now maintain an alist
of theme-value associations.

Alex.