Rant - Elisp terminology is deceptive

[Kelly Dean <kelly@prtime.org>]

I wasted an hour today re-discovering the fact that (eval (car (get 'foo 'standard-value))), not (default-value 'foo), returns the default value of 'foo. I learned this lesson before, but the word ‟default” is so suggestive of meaning «default» that I forgot that it doesn't actually mean «default» in Emacs. I even remembered setq-default, but cognitive dissonance from the absurdity of its name prevented me from remembering that default-value has the same problem.

For the value of a symbol in the global context, how about using the word ‟global”?

Ask any normal English-speaker for an antonym of ‟local”. He won't say ‟default”. He'll say ‟remote” or ‟global” or some such.

Ask him for an antonym of ‟default”. He won't say ‟local”. He'll say ‟non-standard” or ‟customized” or some such.

Inflict Emacs upon him for a few months, then ask him what's the difference between a ‟standard value” and a ‟default value”. He won't know. Even after writing a thousand lines of Elisp.

Tell him that the default value of shift-select-mode is t. Then do (setq shift-select-mode nil), and ask him what the default value is. He'll say ‟t”, not ‟nil”. Ask him what changed, and he'll say shift-select-mode is no longer set to the default value. Then show him what (default-value shift-select-mode) returns, and he'll tell you it must be a bug.

Since ‟default” is already misused to mean «global», it can't be changed to mean «standard», since that would cause even more confusion. ‟Standard” can stay the way it is. ‟Buffer-local” can too. But please stop using the word ‟default” for «global»; use ‟global”. There's already precedence in Emacs: describe-variable calls it ‟global”.