Re: [CVS] f7, f8 bound..

[Per Abrahamsen <abraham@dina.kvl.dk>]

"Robert J. Chassell" <bob@rattlesnake.com> writes:

> Even if they are edited only by some people, they certainly should
> be easy to study.

No, they should not.

> (Incidentally, my .emacs file actually contains the statement:
>
>   ;; custom-set-variables was added by Custom -- don't edit or cut/paste it!
>
> which is entirely contrary to the principles of freedom: it says do
> not modify, do not share!  What a bug!  If you work on this, please
> fix this bug.)

It is hard to share, the themes code is suppsoed to be the fix for
that bug.

Your freedom is not affected, it is a warning that the code is
automatically generated, such code exists in all free software
projects.  You should not edit configure in Emacs, instead edit
configure.in.  It is plain common sense not to edit automatically
generated code, something all programmers learn sooner or later.

> You confuse me:  Suppose I set something with a setq and then, either
> earlier or later in my .emacs file, a customize statement sets a
> symbol property that has the same effect as my setq -- this means I
> have to think both about binding variables and symbol properties.

Don't do that.

> Or are you thinking that people who use Customize are too ignorant to
> ever want to share or learn about Emacs?  

No, but they should read _Introduction to Emacs Lisp_ if, and only if,
they want to learn Emacs Lisp.  They should not expect Customize to
teach them Lisp.  It is hard enough to make a customization fascility
intuitive without at the same time trying to teach the users a
programming language.

> Are you figuring that these people should be given a low grade, not
> for hackers, way to set values?

Customize should not be low grade.

> Are you thinking that hackers will never want to use
> Customize, even for setting things for which they think Customize is
> useful?

No, but they should be smart enough not to set the same variables from
both Lisp and Customize.

> It makes more sense to me to write a backend to the Customize GUI that
> generates a readable .emacs file that people can study, modify, and
> share, if they wish. 

Feel free to do that.  But be sure that you do not diminish the
front-end at the process.

> The goal for Customize should be to generate easy-to-understand Emacs
> Lisp expressions and pretty print them nicely (to fit within a 70
> character wide display, or other fill-column value, in your .emacs
> file).

Oh, that is easy.  

    (fset 'customize 'emacs-lisp-mode)

Done.

I believe the goal of customize should be to make Emacs easy to
customize for non-programmers.