bug#21078: 24.5; Wish: Customize as a general-purpose configuration facility

bug#21078: 24.5; Wish: Customize as a general-purpose configuration facility

[Raffaele Ricciardi]

Dear GNU Emacs maintainers,

the widget interface that Customize creates is tightly tied to
`Custom-mode'.  Yet, the same interface could be useful to any package
that requires users to perform some kind of complex configuration (for
example: configuring a software project before compiling).  Right now,
libraries either resort to asking questions (but this approach doesn't
scale), or require users to edit Lisp files (with the risk of making
mistakes).  Sure, there is the Widget library, but the interface that
has already been implemented for Customize offers a lot of functionality
(automatic creation of widgets according to the type of variables,
search, reverting of changes, etc.) and the ability to reuse all that
work would be no small gain.  Moreover, users would be interacting with
a familiar interface.

Thanks for your attention.

Best Regards.

bug#21078: 24.5; Wish: Customize as a general-purpose configuration facility

[Vaidheeswaran C]

On Thursday 16 July 2015 11:48 PM, Raffaele Ricciardi wrote:

> the widget interface that Customize creates is tightly tied to
> `Custom-mode'.  Yet, the same interface could be useful to any
> package that requires users to perform some kind of complex
> configuration (for example: configuring a software project before
> compiling).

Do you want something more than what is documented in this node:

    (info "(eieio) Customizing")

bug#21078: 24.5; Wish: Customize as a general-purpose configuration facility

[Raffaele Ricciardi]

On Fri, 17 Jul 2015 07:27:17 +0530
Vaidheeswaran C <vaidheeswaran.chinnaraju@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thursday 16 July 2015 11:48 PM, Raffaele Ricciardi wrote:
>
> > the widget interface that Customize creates is tightly tied to
> > `Custom-mode'.  Yet, the same interface could be useful to any
> > package that requires users to perform some kind of complex
> > configuration (for example: configuring a software project before
> > compiling).
>
> Do you want something more than what is documented in this node:
>
>     (info "(eieio) Customizing")
>

No, I don't.  EIEIO is not a renowned package -- the Emacs Lisp
Reference mentions it only once cursorily, and it seems that only CEDET
uses it -- hence I hadn't looked into it.

EIEIO Custom Mode could look more similar to Custom Mode, but I infer
that these modes were written independently, hence achieving a similar
*look and feel* could require too much refactoring.  Anyway, it seems
that the lambdas inside `eieio-custom-object-apply-reset' could be
extracted as commands, so that users could bind them to keys.

Thanks for your assistance.

bug#21078: 24.5; Wish: Customize as a general-purpose configuration facility

[Ted Zlatanov]

On Fri, 17 Jul 2015 17:53:43 +0200 Raffaele Ricciardi <rfflrccrd@gmail.com> wrote: 

RR> On Fri, 17 Jul 2015 07:27:17 +0530
RR> Vaidheeswaran C <vaidheeswaran.chinnaraju@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Thursday 16 July 2015 11:48 PM, Raffaele Ricciardi wrote:
>> 
>> > the widget interface that Customize creates is tightly tied to
>> > `Custom-mode'.  Yet, the same interface could be useful to any
>> > package that requires users to perform some kind of complex
>> > configuration (for example: configuring a software project before
>> > compiling).
>> 
>> Do you want something more than what is documented in this node:
>> 
>> (info "(eieio) Customizing")
>> 

RR> EIEIO Custom Mode could look more similar to Custom Mode, but I infer
RR> that these modes were written independently, hence achieving a similar
RR> *look and feel* could require too much refactoring.  Anyway, it seems
RR> that the lambdas inside `eieio-custom-object-apply-reset' could be
RR> extracted as commands, so that users could bind them to keys.

In the same vein, you can look at assistant.el (part of Emacs and Gnus).
It tries to address exactly this need without any library dependencies
like EIEIO's Custom Mode. It uses the Customize widgets. It lacks
documentation and practical use cases, and hasn't been updated in a
while though.  So it really needs a maintainer IMHO.

Ted