On Mar 11, 2009, at 5:59 AM, Adrian Robert wrote:
>
> One final dying thought about this ;) -- the way it was prefs-panel  
> <-> ns defaults <-> platform-specific settings was a neat way of  
> keeping the NS-specific stuff, be it line spacing or modifier keys,  
> out of .emacs, etc. so they would not interfere when moving a .emacs  
> across platforms.

Yes, but the technical distinction of what is available across  
platforms is not a user-level category that merits aggregating these  
functions in a panel (vs. Emacs customization vs. Options menu vs.  
Lisp variables).

In .emacs, users do (when (eq initial-window-system 'ns) ...).

> As these get moved to .emacs, it is important to make sure settings  
> for these don't pollute it in a way so as to cause migration  
> problems.  I don't know but it would be nice if there were some way  
> to use .emacs and core customization but have these settings  
> conditionalized on whether the variables exist, or whether the  
> windowing system is 'ns.

In custom-file, it appears that something like

(custom-set-variables '(foobar 11 t))

will set foobar even if it wasn't defined.  This is the right thing.

> Finally, the face color setting system will still need to be changed  
> to use the .emacs path.

Haven't looked into this, perhaps you or somebody else can give it a  
try.