Re: reducing defface redundancy

[Miles Bader <miles@lsi.nec.co.jp>]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:
>     So basically the rewritten face spec will look like the original
>     face-spec except with the user's changes integrated.
> 
> I think users will find this surprising and inconsistent.

Can you say why you think this?  I think it gets about as close as we
can to `doing the intuitive thing' when a someone uses the simple face
customization -- it's really impossible to always do things correctly,
since we'd have to read the user's mind.

Remember that the way I suggest integrating the user's changes follows
the structure set up by the face creator, and possible user
customizations are one thing to think about when creating the face.

> In addition, we want to have buffer-local face definitions, and that
> will make this issue even more complex.

It depends on how buffer-local face definitions are implemented.  My
feeling is that there _shouldn't_ be real buffer-specific faces, but
rather a way of remapping faces within a buffer.  For instance foo-mode
could make the `foo-default' be used as the default face within its
buffers; if the user want's to change it, they'd have customize
`foo-default', not `default' (though the customization widget could
notice that there's a buffer-local remapping, and ask the user `do you
want to edit the global `default' face, or the `foo-default' face being
used in this buffer').

> You can customize a face for the current display, for the current
> session, looking at a simple list of attributes, but you cannot save
> this.  Or you can customize the conditional commands that define the
> face, by looking at the whole structure of them.  That kind of
> customization you can save if you wish.

Well that would certainly get rid of the ambiguity, but I suspect that
most users would absolutely hate it (I certainly would) -- it attempts
to solve a fairly rare problem (face customizations that have surprising
results on other display types) by making the _normal case_ more
inconvenient and confusing!

I think this is a case where it's possible to do a good job
automatically most of the time.  Since the problems that might arise are
fairly minor (the face looks a bit funny), I think they're well
justified by the extra convenience and utility for users in the common
case from doing things automatically.

-Miles
-- 
The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.
  --Albert Einstein