Re: address@hidden: rcs2log]

[Juanma Barranquero]

On Tue, 29 Oct 2002 22:39:53 +0300, "Eli Zaretskii" <address@hidden> wrote:

> Why is it fragile?

Because you are executing programs that you don't control (what if
trying a sort.exe causes a crash or any other kind of problem), and
because probably it'd fail if I happen to modify the PATH afterwards.
If I have to manually configure a variable and after a while I change
the path I'm more prone to remember it that if Emacs somehow configured
it behind my back.

> This would require users to customize the variable.  Without a proper
> customization, the relevant feature will be broken.

Sure. But we already have cases like these now, and they're resolved by
having -program variables. The first "find.exe" in my PATH is
C:\WINNT\system32\find.exe. Same for ftp and telnet. Ange-FTP didn't try
to find what was the "right" ftp, I manually configured
`ange-ftp-ftp-program'.

Having good defaults helps here.

                                                           /L/e/k/t/u