RE: Marking old window variables obsolete

["Drew Adams" <drew.adams@oracle.com>]

> Even if we supposse that everybody reads the NEWS file and are
> willing to adapt their perfectly working configuration on accordance,
> your approach would limit the set of acceptable new features to those
> which are indisputably more useful than the functionality they
> replace/modify for the taste of (almost?) all the Emacs user 
> population.

Sorry, but that simply does not follow, at all.  None of it.

I am _not_ proposing _any_ limitation on what new features are acceptable.  And
in particular I have not objected to the "new machinery" for controlling buffer
display, and I have even said explicitly that I am _glad_ for it to exist.

I simply object to deprecating those longstanding user options now.

And I prefer that we in fact keep them as a simple, alternative way to customize
the behavior.

> What's reasonable, IMHO, is to add clear instructions to the 
> docstrings of those variables and functions explaining how to
> migrate to the new machinery.

That is also something that I (and Eli also) proposed.  You and I are in the
same choir on that.

Such doc certainly should be part of any future deprecation, if ever that should
occur.

And it would be helpful even if we do not deprecate the options.  The
correspondence between the different ways of doing things is something that is
good to know, in any case.

> If those instructions turn to be too complex, it is an
> indication that the new system is not so good.

That's also something I suggested.  If we cannot even explain that
correspondence in simple terms, it's hard to imagine that we would be convinced
that the variables should be deprecated, especially so soon.

> A good practice is to do those kind of documentation tasks at the
> design phase of the new machinary as a preemptive usability check.

Again, we are in agreement.  And that is why I brought it up back then.

http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2011-06/msg00677.html
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2009-05/msg00048.html
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2011-06/msg00834.html