Re: toolbar conventions

[Luc Teirlinck <teirllm@dms.auburn.edu>]

Richard Stallman wrote:

   Does anyone have any ideas on the issue of how to use the term
   "option"?  That issue is more important--it is not just an issue of
   punctuation, it is inconsistent use of a word.  Would someone like to
   study the situation and find out which uses occur where?

If we use the name "User Option" for both variables and faces, then
that term would be only useful when discussing the Customize interface
in the Emacs manual.  Apart from the similarity in the way you
customize them through that interface, user variables and faces are
very different.  They even have different name spaces.  (Which makes
talking about "the option foo" meaningless.  This is a nuisance, even
when discussing the Customize interface.)

Calling something a "User Option" in the Elisp manual would be
meaningless, you would have to consistently call them "User Variables".
That means that all uses of defopt in all manuals should be changed to
`@defvr {User Variable}'.  The discussion of defopt in the Texinfo
manual would have to be changed, since the reference to Emacs would no
longer be valid.  This is just one example of all the problems we
would run into and all the work we would have to do to consistently
implement this terminology change.

Sincerely,

Luc.