Re: Customize buttons that change user's customfileshouldaskforconfirmation

[Robert J. Chassell]

In X Windows, when you move your mouse cursor over the button that
says `Save for Future Sessions' the help documentation should not only says

    Make your editing in this buffer take effect for future Emacs sessions.

as it does, but also

    This action automatically writes to your existing initialization file
    or creates a .emacs file if you lack one."

Otherwise, novices may be confused where custom automatically writes
and saves values.

This change is a bug that should be fixed during this feature freeze.

Other than discussion over the exact language to be used, this change
only involves adding two lines to the `custom-buffer-create-internal'
defun in   emacs/lisp/cus-edit.el
from

                 :help-echo "\
Make your editing in this buffer take effect for future Emacs sessions."

to
                 :help-echo "\
Make your editing in this buffer take effect for future Emacs sessions.
This action automatically writes to your existing initialization file
or creates a .emacs file if you lack one."

I used the phrase `existing initialization file' because some people
specify a different name for their .emacs file than `.emacs'.
However, the default for custom is to create a .emacs file
automatically.

More confusion:  I just discovered another bug.

I started an instance of Emacs with `emacs -Q' with a different user,
one that lacked an existing initialization file.  When I set an option
with `M-x customize-option RET baud-rate RET' a new .emacs file was
created, as expected.  However, I also received a message that said

    Saving settings from "emacs -q" would overwrite existing customizations

But since I had no existing customization, this message was wrong!

This is a second bug that should be fixed before the release.

As people keep observing, customize is a can of worms.  The more we
look, the more creepy, crawly things we see.  Worse, we are not going
fishing nor distributing them over a physical garden to improve it.

I once thought it was a good idea to offer a feature to write new
values to an initialization file.  I am not so sure now.

--
    Robert J. Chassell
    address@hidden                         GnuPG Key ID: 004B4AC8
    http://www.rattlesnake.com                  http://www.teak.cc