Re: Documentation for custom-file - is not (load custom-file) needed?

[Luc Teirlinck]

Lennart Borgman wrote:

   1) Having "custom-file" saved to custom-set-variables means I can not copy
   "custom file" to a new location or computer without editing it.

You do not have to edit it.  Just customize it again through Custom.
If you set custom-file in your .emacs, you have to edit .emacs anyway.
You have to do _something_, no matter what.  You can not possibly
rename or copy a file and expect Emacs to know that you did this
without telling it anything.

   Saving a little bit of time for potentially many users is a good
   thing.

It will _not_ be many users.  If you try to customize this through
Custom, and choose "File", you immediately get warned not do this
without reading the docstring carefully.

You then get provided with two lines that you can kill and yank into
.emacs and the docstring recommends that you just do that instead of
customizing through Custom.

   2) A GUI interface should be very helpful since most users will not try to
   read much of the help texts when using it.

There are many defcustoms that are much more dangerous to customize
blindly than this one.  In this case you get clearly warned and even
told that you probably want to set this in .emacs instead.

   I think that the problems are exactly at the point when
   "custom-file" is saved and this is probably what we will discuss
   later.

I have no problem with rediscussing anything after the release.  But
unless we would decide to go for the ultimate and final solution right
now, I believe that it is better to leave everything essentially like
it is, but with better, more emphatic and more difficult to overlook
documentation, as my patch does.

Once more, the defcustom is kept for three reasons:

1.  For people who are used to customize custom-file that way.  Many
    of them do not consider the current brehavior broken or buggish at
    all.  A change in behavior could potentially be confusing to them.

2.  For people who use Custom as a browser.  They get told to read the
    docstring, which provides two lines that can be killed and yanked
    into .emacs.

3.  Not to have one or two Emacs versions with very exceptional
    implementations that we would need to be compatible with should we
    want to change this again.

Sincerely,

Luc.