Re: In defense of Customize [was: Trying to right-align my window on startup]

[phillip.lord@newcastle.ac.uk (Phillip Lord)]

Emanuel Berg <embe8573@student.uu.se> writes:
>>  3. Re-using customization (parts) of other Emacs users
>> (or own on other machine)
>
> That will always be frustrating so I think the solution
> to that problem is: don't do it. To have one computer
> at work, one at home, and one gadget in between, and to
> run Emacs on all, and expect everything to be the same
> - why do that *at all*? Why not have the same computer
> at work, as at home? Why have several computers at all?
> Why not have *one* computer, which behaves the way you
> want it to, and when you are not there, you do
> different things? If you *must* use different computers
> all over, and you have accepted that, why not accept
> that they *are* different, and thus the UX as well?

Just because something works for you, does not mean that it would work
for everyone. You probably have different working practices, different
work, are a different age, and have a different mind and body from me.
Computers are personal (like opinions).

I have about 5 computers, for different circumstances.

I have: 

a desktop at work, with big screens, on a sit to stand desk that I have
for a bad back

an old laptop at work, that I use for writing notes at meetings

a cheap 14in laptop at home that I use most of the time there

a desktop at home that has largely been outdated, but which I will
probably put on some shelves so I have a stand up space at home also.

a netbook which I use when travelling because it fits between my stomach
and the plane/train seat in front.



I use unison and sync my file space. Ironically, customize works very
well in this environment. I use hand-written, sync'd lisp for things on
all machines; I do not sync my .emacs (which just contains customize
code and loads my hand-written stuff). So I use customize for things I
want different on different machines.

If some one say they have a problem, telling them to realise that they
don't have that problem at all is often not helpful.

Phil