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Re: toggling a minor mode should not tell Customize that the value has b


From: Stefan Monnier
Subject: Re: toggling a minor mode should not tell Customize that the value has been set
Date: Sun, 06 Jan 2008 16:20:06 -0500
User-agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/23.0.50 (gnu/linux)

> I haven't seen any explanation. You've simply said, as support, that
> toggling the variable enables/disables the mode for the session.

OK, let's take a step back:

  There are currently only two options: either toggling the mode
  interactively causes the var to be "changed outside Customize" or it
  marks it as "Customized".

The current code chooses the second and you advocate the first.
The problem with the first is that it's a catch-all case: it just says
"this has been changed somehow and we have no clue whatsoever what it
means, how it was done, whether it'll occur again in the future, and hence
Customize doesn't know what effect will result from changing and/or
saving this variable.  For all Customize knows, the value might already
have changed between the time Customize read it to display it and the
time the user gets to see the displayed value".

In contrast, when the user interactively does M-x foo-mode RET, we know
that this has been done in a way that Customize can easily understand
and which does not affect its ability o make further changes and/or save
the variable.  Calling it customize-mark-as-set is a way to better
interact with Customize.

For that reason, the first option is *wrong*: it loses
valuable information about how the minor mode was changed.

In my mind "customize-customized" returns the list of defcustom
variables that were changed in a principled way.  Period.
If you want to distinguish more finely between "principled" and "via
Custom", go ahead, but I doubt the benefits are worth the trouble.


        Stefan




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