RE: Visual cleanup for customize buffers

[Drew Adams]

    It seems like the trend is to add or extend the clutter rather
    than reducing it.

Reducing the clutter should be one of the main goals in reworking Customize,
after the release.

    Why?  They would just "save all options" -- just like any other GUI
    applications do when you click "Save" or "Appy" or "Ok".  I honestly
    don't see why emacs has to be different here.  Being different (be
    default) is just confusing.

This probably deserves more discussion, after the release. My a priori
feeling (meaning that you might convince me otherwise) is that _because_
Emacs lets you set things without saving them (automatically), you must also
be able to save individual changes. And _because_ multiple (even many!)
changes might have been made, if we let users save more than one at a time
then they should be able to specify which changes to save.

It is too dangerous to simply save everything that has been changed when you
click a Save button. You must be able to see what will be saved. And,
preferably, you should be able to modify the set of saves to be made.

IOW, "Emacs has to be different here", I think, because it is different in
letting you set without saving (which feature I wouldn't want to sacrifice).
You can end up with lots of changes, some of which you might even have
forgotten you made, and some of which you do not really want to save.

This difference is magnified in importance by the fact that Emacs is
typically used in very long editor sessions - people keep the same session
running for days, weeks, and even months at a time. It is too easy to forget
that you changed something long ago which you don't necessarily want to save
for future sessions.

By making the changes that will be saved explicit (i.e., notifying the
user), I think everyone should be satisfied. Those who want Save to simply
save everything would just confirm (not hard to do). Those who want to save
only some changes would have the opportunity to do so.