Custom themes and precedence

[Dave Abrahams]

Hi all,

I thought I'd use themes to store groups of settings that should take
effect in specific circumstances; for example, on machine X, I have a
fonts not available elsewhere and I'd like to use those by default when
on machine X.  So I programmatically look for a theme based on the
machine name and if found, I enable it.

I customized default-frame-alist in the theme for machine X... which
worked fine until I customized default-frame-alist "non-themedly"
somewhere else.  That caused the new setting to go into the "user" theme
*which takes precedence over all others*.  That last bit isn't working
out so well for my use-case.  Should this usage be accomodated, is it
outside the intended applications of themes, or...?

TIA,

-- 
Dave Abrahams
BoostPro Computing
http://www.boostpro.com