From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: main.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: "Lennart Borgman" Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: External programs and resources Date: Fri, 3 Sep 2004 01:27:10 +0200 Sender: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Message-ID: <001a01c49144$ed587ee0$0200a8c0@sedrcw11488> References: <002a01c49072$0ca8b130$0200a8c0@sedrcw11488> NNTP-Posting-Host: deer.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: sea.gmane.org 1094167894 3365 80.91.224.253 (2 Sep 2004 23:31:34 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@sea.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 2 Sep 2004 23:31:34 +0000 (UTC) Cc: Emacs Devel Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Fri Sep 03 01:31:25 2004 Return-path: Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([199.232.76.165]) by deer.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 3.35 #1 (Debian)) id 1C3137-0006Rw-00 for ; Fri, 03 Sep 2004 01:31:25 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1] helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.33) id 1C3186-0000Nm-Te for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Thu, 02 Sep 2004 19:36:34 -0400 Original-Received: from mailman by lists.gnu.org with tmda-scanned (Exim 4.33) id 1C3180-0000Nh-IK for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 02 Sep 2004 19:36:28 -0400 Original-Received: from exim by lists.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.33) id 1C317y-0000NV-Mt for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 02 Sep 2004 19:36:28 -0400 Original-Received: from [199.232.76.173] (helo=monty-python.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.33) id 1C317y-0000NL-Kh for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 02 Sep 2004 19:36:26 -0400 Original-Received: from [81.228.10.116] (helo=av1-1-sn4.m-sp.skanova.net) by monty-python.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.34) id 1C312b-0000U1-V7 for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 02 Sep 2004 19:30:54 -0400 Original-Received: by av1-1-sn4.m-sp.skanova.net (Postfix, from userid 502) id 2284C37E73; Fri, 3 Sep 2004 01:30:52 +0200 (CEST) Original-Received: from smtp2-2-sn4.m-sp.skanova.net (smtp2-2-sn4.m-sp.skanova.net [81.228.10.182]) by av1-1-sn4.m-sp.skanova.net (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1467337E4F; Fri, 3 Sep 2004 01:30:52 +0200 (CEST) Original-Received: from sedrcw11488 (t4o58p45.telia.com [195.252.57.45]) by smtp2-2-sn4.m-sp.skanova.net (Postfix) with SMTP id 0756437E42; Fri, 3 Sep 2004 01:30:50 +0200 (CEST) Original-To: "Stefan Monnier" X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2800.1409 X-MIMEOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2800.1409 X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: main.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:26742 X-Report-Spam: http://spam.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.devel:26742 ----- Original Message ----- From: "Stefan Monnier" > > I have not been able to find a common entrypoint for external resources from > > Emacs. I would for example appreciate if there was only one place where the > > path to a program like Ghostview was entered. > > > I would suggest that customization of things like this should be in one or > > several lisp modules that could be used by other modules. > > It might be a good idea, but since packages are developed separately by > manny people who don't know each other, it's not always so easy (especially > because you also still want to be able to specify different values > sometimes, because you might sometimes want to use one version of `gv' for > one package and another for some other package). Maybe this can be resolved rather easily, at least in principle. The organisation could perhaps be like this: - A common elisp module (ext-prog.el?) where for each external program used by emacs there is a "defcustom" variable for its path. If not set this could be initialized by executable-find perhaps. - If a lisp module is using an external program listed in "ext-prog.el" it can use the corresponding variable. - If this module however want to give the possibility to use another version of the program than the one pointed to by the "ext-prog.el" variable it can define a function that uses a NON-"defcustom" variable defined in this package if it is set, otherwise the "ext-prog.el" variable. (I think it would be confusing to have the second, module-specific variable defcustom too.) - A customization group, maybe named "external-programs"? > In the short term, the best we can do is find those redundant customizations > and unify them. Which ones were you thinking of? At the moment I was only thinking of Ghostview and it relatives. - Lennart