RE: About the :distant-foreground face attribute

[Drew Adams]

> > > > been a source of annoyance over the years.  Introducing
> > > > another such situation should, in my view, be avoided as
> > > > far as possible.
> > >
> > > That's a good point.  Basically, what you're saying is that
> > > instead of :distant-foreground we could have a :foreground that
> > > can be of the form (NORMAL-FOREGROUND . ALTERNATE-FOREGROUND),
> > > where ALTERNATE-FOREGROUND is used when NORMAL-FOREGROUND would
> > > lead to a lack of contrast.
> >
> > Please don't.  That too would break code that expects :foreground
> > to be as it is now.
> 
> Why do you assume that the previous form will not be accepted?  Of
> course, it will be.

Accepted by what?  Are you thinking of `defface'?  Why would you assume
that I assume that?  I'm sure you will make `defface' etc. work.  I'm
sure that you will make all distributed `emacs -Q' code work, for this.

That's not the point.  It's about being accepted by, recognized by, and
useful for other, existing code.  If code expects a string foreground
value then it is not designed to DTRT with a cons etc.  This should be
obvious, no?