From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: phillip.lord@newcastle.ac.uk (Phillip Lord) Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.help Subject: Re: In defense of Customize [was: Trying to right-align my window on startup] Date: Wed, 15 Jan 2014 10:29:48 +0000 Message-ID: <87txd57d2b.fsf@newcastle.ac.uk> References: <3cec217d-8adb-4e6c-b239-eff0c8b520c9@googlegroups.com> <5581e666-3500-4a30-abb2-6454e2398a01@default> NNTP-Posting-Host: plane.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1389782260 6176 80.91.229.3 (15 Jan 2014 10:37:40 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 15 Jan 2014 10:37:40 +0000 (UTC) Cc: Rusi , help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org To: Drew Adams Original-X-From: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Wed Jan 15 11:37:47 2014 Return-path: Envelope-to: geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([208.118.235.17]) by plane.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1W3Nr0-000856-QT for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Wed, 15 Jan 2014 11:37:47 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:53637 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1W3Nqy-0001VO-5b for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Wed, 15 Jan 2014 05:37:44 -0500 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:53363) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1W3NjV-0000np-Hv for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Wed, 15 Jan 2014 05:30:06 -0500 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1W3NjQ-0002lF-SV for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Wed, 15 Jan 2014 05:30:01 -0500 Original-Received: from cheviot22.ncl.ac.uk ([128.240.234.22]:37901) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1W3NjQ-0002k5-KC for help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Wed, 15 Jan 2014 05:29:56 -0500 Original-Received: from smtpauth-vm.ncl.ac.uk ([10.8.233.129]) by cheviot22.ncl.ac.uk with esmtp (Exim 4.63) (envelope-from ) id 1W3NjM-000137-Dg; Wed, 15 Jan 2014 10:29:52 +0000 Original-Received: from localhost (jangai.ncl.ac.uk [10.66.67.223]) (authenticated bits=0) by smtpauth-vm.ncl.ac.uk (8.13.8/8.13.8) with ESMTP id s0FATp0L006501 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=DHE-RSA-AES128-SHA bits=128 verify=NO); Wed, 15 Jan 2014 10:29:52 GMT In-Reply-To: <5581e666-3500-4a30-abb2-6454e2398a01@default> (Drew Adams's message of "Tue, 14 Jan 2014 09:37:34 -0800") User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/24.3 (gnu/linux) X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: GNU/Linux 2.6.x X-Received-From: 128.240.234.22 X-BeenThere: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.14 Precedence: list List-Id: Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.help:95411 Archived-At: Drew Adams writes: >> > > But (IMHO) too many people ignore Customize, often because >> > > they've gotten the impression somehow that it is for non-Lispers >> > > or wimps. >> > >> > I just hate its UI. >> >> If a first year student of mine cannot distinguish data and code >> (s)he'd get an F grade. customize does that. > > No, it is Emacs that does that, by not requiring (or even > encouraging) the use of `custom-file', and by telling Customize to > put code in your init file by default. That is a not-so-wise design > decision about how Emacs uses Customize. It is not the fault of > Customize if Emacs tells it to write to your init file. I also found this problematic. Nowadays I don't really have a .emacs per se; all it does is add ~/emacs to the load-path, and then loads a file from there. There used to be another bug with this -- if you launched with -q customize would refuse to save state even if you had set custom file elsewhere. That appears to have gone now. > > To tell you the truth, I never thought I'd be an apologist for > Customize. I too used to avoid it and use only hand-coded Lisp > for all of my customizations. And I too am no big fan of the UI > (and I have proposed and implemented some UI enhancements). I have > probably criticized it (in concrete terms, including bug reports) > as much as anyone. I use customize for things configuration that I don't want to sync between machines, and hand-crafted lisp for everything else. But even here customize is good, because the structure of the defcustom form tells you as much as the documentation about how to set things. I would like to have a "custom-setq" which set a var, checked to see whether the types were correct wrt customize, then crashed if not. It would be nice to use the knowledge of customize from lisp. Phil