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Re: Customize may not be appropriate for older users


From: William F. Hammond
Subject: Re: Customize may not be appropriate for older users
Date: 11 Jan 2002 10:28:31 -0500
User-agent: Gnus/5.09 (Gnus v5.9.0) Emacs/21.1

Kim F. Storm (http://www.cua.dk) writes:

> You can even keep customizations in a separate file:
> 
> Near the bottom of my .emacs, I have (something like) this:
> 
>         (setq custom-file "~/.emacs.custom")

Hmmm... in INFO we have INFO:/Emacs/Customization and the upstart
(an adjective provoked by the qualifier of users in the subject)
INFO:/Custom, with no cross-references.  Isn't that a prima facie
case for the wrong-headedness of "custom" writing in init-file by
default?

Bug 1:

There should be a cross-reference to the documentation about the
variable custom-file, which is INFO:/Custom/The\ Init\ File in
INFO:/Emacs/Customization/Init\ File.

And shouldn't INFO:/Custom be a menu item in
INFO:/Emacs/Customization?

Bug 2:

The default value of custom-file should not be nil.

There is almost never any justification for both the user and a
program writing to the same file.

Always and everywhere, sooner or later, most such arrangements lead to
trouble.  A recent notorious example that is very relevant to current
Emacs projects is "/var/spool/mail/user".  Isn't this one of the
reasons that mail spools are dying off?

                                    -- Bill




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