Re: byte compiling defcustom

[Luc Teirlinck]

Richard already made a decision on this.  But just to help you explain
the decision:

   This returns (2). And I would argue that this is the right thing to do
   for _this_ example

For _this_ example obviously yes, but see my response to Stefan.

   Now, is there a situation where showing a lisp expression is the desired
   thing? Any examples in the emacs sources?

Plenty, but since a decision has already been made, I am not going to
spend time finding some of them among the even more numerous
defcustoms whose default values are booleans and such (for which it
does not make a difference).

   Without any examples I am inclined to believe that showing users lisp
   code defeats one of the purposes of defcustom: not having to write lisp
   to customize behavior.

It does not _serve_, but in no way _defeats_ either, _one_ of the
purposes of Custom.  (The Lisp only gets shown if the user _asks_ for
it).  But it serves several _other_ purposes of Custom, such as: use
as a convenient browser with possibility to conveniently edit the
standard value without having to grep through the source code, visit
.emacs, cut and paste and so on.  Also, the possibility to
conveniently manage the new value afterwards.  In addition, it is a
help to people who want to gradually transition from just using
straightforward customizations to writing Lisp.  I know of a sysadmin
who does not really know Lisp who successfully manages to work that way
(managed to fool me in believing he _did_ know Elisp).

Sincerely,

Luc.