Re: [emacs-w3m:11603] Re: interactive-p obsolete

["Andreas Röhler" <andreas.roehler@online.de>]

[ ... ]
>
> Hi Andreas
>
> My main point was that backwards compatibility, as suggested in your
> original post, was not sufficient justification to revert things as it
> is trivial to add code

Hi Tim,

for now a workaround from org-mode was presented, which looks buggy for 
me, as it sends an argument collected optional to a form requiring one.

cc to Bastien for this

At least would not call it trivial.

Nontheless I agree existed two similar functions at the time, so some 
cleanup was recommended.

  that would provide this compatibility.
> Furthermore, in many cases, packages already have this compatibility
> layer in order to support both GNU Emacs and XEmacs (see the org-mode
> example which has since been posted). However, while I may have things
> a bit mixed up, as I understand it, there are some good reasons for
> the change. It isn't just a change made  for the sake of it. Some may
> debate whether the reasons are sufficient, but for me they seem
> reasonable.

IMHO things are much more difficult now than before. That's a marchin 
into the swamp :)

>
> Others with more experience and better memories are probably able to
> fill in things better, but from memory, there are some problems with
> the use of interactive-p because people misinterpret what it means and
> because they tend to use it without thinking about what 'interactive'
> means.

That possible misunderstanding has a much broader base, it results from 
perspectives of active and passiv and is still present in the remaining 
form.

BTW that's why we can't understand truly abstract reasoning, always need 
examples how to interpret.

  Its one of those subtle issues that you may think you
> understand and everyone else understands in the same way until you
> begin to talk to others. You then find out there are a number of
> situations where it isn't as clear as it originally seemed and that
> you do need to think about the context where you use such a test and
> what it is you really are wanting to test for.
>
> I also believe the water was made even more 'muddy' by the fact that a
> form of called-interactive-p, without an argument, already existed.
> People found it hard to know when to use called-interactive-p or
> interactive-p or what the difference was or why there was both. To
> clarify matters, one had to go.
>
> There was a discussion a couple of years back regarding this.

Yeah, starting here AFAIS:

http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2009-08/msg00784.html

At the
> time, it was recognised that fixing it would improve elisp in the
> long-term, but doing so was going to cause some pain. I believe that
> the result, called-interactive-p with an optional argument and the
> marking of interactive-p as obsolete was considered the solution with
> the least pain and best outcome and seems like a reasonable compromise
> to me.
>
> Once interactive-p is actually removed, we will realise the benefits
> of having a single predicate to test for 'interactive' and because of
> the additional argument, possibly a predicate that is applied after
> more thought as to what the programmer is really testing for,
> hopefully resulting in code where intentions are clearer and
> therefore, easier to maintain.
>
> Tim
>

Hm, thinking the other way.

IMHO Drew was right and Stefan and Chong have been right in their first 
responses.

But let's stop here and see if others notice that also.
Should I'm being wrong here - the better.

Cheers,

Andreas