RE: command to customize the thing at point?

[Drew Adams]

    >     > How about having a single command that would call
    >     > customize-face, customize-option, or customize-group,
    >     > as appropriate, on the
    >     > name at point or under the mouse pointer?

    I think I understand how the command is supposed to work, what I was
    curious about was in what situations a user would want to use it. Is
    it when reading the manual maybe, having point over a "thing", or
    maybe when browsing Emacs lisp code?

Anywhere you might find the name of an Emacs thingy: *Help*; *Apropos*,
Emacs or Emacs-Lisp or Ediff or ... manual (*Info*); browsing Emacs-Lisp
code; reading email about Emacs; consulting a message in *Messages* that
suggests using an option;...

Of course, in some of these places some of the thingies are already linked
to *Help* descriptions, which in turn have links to Customize.

The point is that we already have `customize-face', `customize-option', and
`customize-group' - whenever & wherever you might use one of those, you
might use `customize-thing-at-point' (or -at-mouse-pointer). If the former
commands are useful, then so should be the latter command(s) - especially,
but not only, for gnubies.

Such a command (sh|c)ould be bound to a key, to make it even more useful for
gnubies. And, since accessing the Custom information about an option or face
is useful not only to change it but also to learn about it (doc string,
current state, possible alternative values,...), the `customize-*' commands
could be considered to be part of the `C-h' family. IOW, why not bind
`customize-thing-at-point' to, say, `C-h o'? (`C-h c' would be better, of
course.)