menu-bar-options-save and menu-bar-options-menu

menu-bar-options-save and menu-bar-options-menu

[Drew Adams]

I expect that modifying the Options menu will be one thing that customizing
users will want to do - especially adding options that are toggles.

Command `menu-bar-options-save' saves the changed options that appear in the
`menu-bar-options-menu'. However, the list of such options in
`menu-bar-options-save' is hard-coded, which seems inflexible.

If you change `menu-bar-options-menu' (e.g. adding an option to the menu),
you must (usually) separately change the hard-coded definition of
`menu-bar-options-save'. Presumably these two definitions were created by
hand and will be maintained by hand.

Could the list used in `menu-bar-options-save' be generated somehow from the
list of actual menu items at runtime? Or could the menu itself be generated
by a macro that also has the side effect of creating the list for
`menu-bar-options-save'? IOW, in some way (at runtime or compile-time), link
the two definitions by program, rather than by hand maintenance?

If such an approach is not taken, could a comment at least be added to 1)
the doc string of `menu-bar-options-save' and 2) the code defining the
Options menu, to indicate this maintenance relation between the function's
definition and the menu items more clearly? Something along the lines of "If
you modify the Options menu, you might want to also update the list of
options to be saved in `menu-bar-options-save'.

Re: menu-bar-options-save and menu-bar-options-menu

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: "Drew Adams" <drew.adams@oracle.com>
> Date: Mon, 17 Jan 2005 21:17:57 -0800
> 
> I expect that modifying the Options menu will be one thing that customizing
> users will want to do - especially adding options that are toggles.

What options would you like to add?

At the time, the current list of options was carefully chosen so as to
include the most popular ones, but perhaps the list needs to be
revised (it's been almost 4 years since the last time, I think).

As for flexibility, I think the idea is that Customize is the flexible
machinery you are looking for.

RE: menu-bar-options-save and menu-bar-options-menu

[Drew Adams]

    > I expect that modifying the Options menu will be one thing
    > that customizing users will want to do - especially adding
    > options that are toggles.

    What options would you like to add?

Tootsi Frootsi :-)

Seriously, none. My point is not about the current content of the menu. My
point is that we should look at the Options menu as something that will
likely be customized (augmented).

Users (or libraries) that create new options (e.g. toggles) might want to
add them to the Options menu. That's all. This commonly happens when you add
a plugin to many applications: the Preferences that a user can choose are
updated to include options from the plugin.

    As for flexibility, I think the idea is that Customize
    is the flexible machinery you are looking for.

That may be the idea, but I don't see how that idea or the flexible
machinery helps here.

I was just pointing out that there is an implicit coupling between the
Options menu and the options treated by `menu-bar-options-save': the latter
depends on the former, but this dependency is not handled automatically.

If a user (or a library) changes the Options menu, it is likely that he will
want/need to change the save command also. It would be convenient (and more
modular and less error-prone) if the update to one automatically updated the
other too. I mentioned some possible mechanisms; there are no doubt others
(and better).

Re: menu-bar-options-save and menu-bar-options-menu

[Richard Stallman]

    Seriously, none. My point is not about the current content of the menu. My
    point is that we should look at the Options menu as something that will
    likely be customized (augmented).

This is at best a minor issue.  Please let's not spend time discussing
it now.

We need to spend our time focusing on making a release that works.
Drew, would you please wait till the release before suggesting more
feature ideas?