Re: font-lock-maximum-decoration should be 2 by default?

[Vitalie Spinu]

  >> "Stephen J. Turnbull" <address@hidden>
  >> on Sat, 18 Aug 2012 14:10:58 +0900 wrote:

  > Vitalie Spinu writes:
  >> In font-lock language: If you design a feature which is intended for
  >> 30% of salad lovers. Then by the virtue of emacs defaults and peoples'
  >> psychology, 90% of the people will end up using it. That is, 60% of
  >> normal users (which don't like salads) will end up eating it.

  > True, but it's not clear that Emacs should care about "normal" users
  > in the sense of "people's psychology".  Emacs users are different, at
  > least that's the conventional wisdom.  They like (1) customizability,
  > (2) a consistent user interface across applications.  It's not obvious
  > that the generally prevalent "accept the default" psychology is that
  > relevant to Emacs users.

It's easy to get sick of too much customization. It's another well know
paradox of human pshychology -- we want more choose but too much choice
is bad for you
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8155000/8155505.stm).

There are so many small inconveniences/bugs which I know I can solve
probably in 15-30 minutes by studding the code/docs/customization, but I
continue to leave with those in emacs, sometimes for months and
years. Familiar?

  >> 3) Developers which would like to capture 30% of salad lovers will try
  >> to find workarounds. That is, add redundant, mode-specific font-lock
  >> customization, or mess with font-lock-maximum-decoration.

  > This is true, but I'm not sure if it's a problem.

It's a problem in light of yours (2). Everyone wants a consistent
interface.

  >> 4) If not self-obvious, the proposed modification would allow a default
  >> level of fontification. Thing which is not possible right now.

  > It's not obvious that the concept of "level of fontification" is
  > entirely consistent.  At least for me, if certain features aren't
  > fontified,

I agree, levels are not flexible enough (or at least at higher
levels). People tend to agree on the basic fontification like strings,
comments and keywords. But with more fontification levels become a
trouble. For example I can choose to fortify the function call as in
"foo(x, y)" or I can choose to fortify parenthesis. Different people
might choose different things. Also, I might want to fortify {} braces
as they are difficult to distinguish from (), but leave all other paren
syntax untouched.  These things are difficult or impossible to fit into
levels.

Vitalie.