Re: customize

[Richard Stallman]

    > I documented custom-face, but I don't see a reason to change the
    > default to use a different file.

    Jeff was discussing customisation of custom-file, not custom-face.

It was custom-file that I documented.  I wrote the wrong name in the
message.

      * Database reason: one file then contains only customize's actions,
        making it much easier to keep track of which pieces of one's
        config come from where.

It is easy enough to distinguish--the stuff written by Customize
is compact, distinctive, and clearly labeled.

      * Priority/ordering reason: customize adds things to the end of its
        file: this is sensible for it, but potentially bad for elisp which
        needs to be executed after customizations; using a separate file
        for customize lets my ~/.emacs load the customize part early, late
        or in between, at my option, rather than having it always be last.

There appears to be some controversy about whether this is really true.
Part of the controversy may be that your description of the problem
is heavy on emotions and the facts are not clear.

    > After it is there, you can add stuff in ~/.emacs after it.
    and get a layer-cake of intermingled fragments, some of one's own
    construction, others added by customize

Could you show an example of this?  As far as I know, customize writes
all its definitions for variables in a single sexp, and all its specs
for faces in a single sexp, and this can't produce very many layers.

If you show me what the problem looks like, maybe I can change Customize
to edit the file in a way that is more convenient.

      * Byte-compilation: putting it all in a separate .el file provides
        for the possibility of byte-compiling the customization elisp.

You can byte-compile .emacs, so is this really an advantage?