Re: Getting more info on a variable in Customize buffers

[Per Abrahamsen]

Stefan Monnier <address@hidden> writes:

>> I probably don't fully understand, although I think I follow you. Sounds
>> like an implementation problem to me - or perhaps a design problem?
>
> The designer might call it a feature rather than a problem.
>
> I do tend to think that it was a mistake to design something that looks like
> an elisp variable and which happens to be an elisp variable in 99% of the
> cases but which may be something else.

I kind of agree, I always thought there instead would be many more
"defsomething".  

The :get, :set and :init were, if I remember right, introduced by
XEmacs people for use with specifiers.  And since I didn't really care
about XEmacs (and certainly didn't understood specifiers to write a
defspecifier) I let them have their way.

And when it was there, it also got (ab)used in Emacs for minor modes.
It should have been part of a define-minor-mode instead, but as I
remember there already is was one of those.

It is simply too convenient to use these hooks to overload defcustom,
rather then define new "def-" whatever.

There also is a patch floating around here to overload defcustom for
keymaps as well.  Again, I can't come up with a good API for a
"defkeymap", and wouldn't find the time to implement it anyway.