Re: cursor custom group: bad labels and help text

[Juri Linkov]

> M-x customize-group cursor
>
> 1. "Delay in seconds." is a poor tag for `blink-cursor-delay' - it
>    says nothing about "cursor" or "blink", and gives no indication of
>    which Lisp option is involved. I thought that the "friendly" was
>    supposed to sytematically reflect the Lisp name (that is, be the
>    same, modulo capitalization). Finally, there should be no period in
>    the name.

I completely agree.  It is confusing when e.g. the documentation
suggests to customize an option, but really in the Customization group
buffer there is no option with the same name.  A customization tag
rather obscures the option name than makes it more clear.
All documentation strings are displayed in the Customization buffer
just next to every option anyway, so users always can see the
documentation of every customization option no matter what names
they have.

Using :tag makes sense to fix grammar (e.g. without :tag "Cursor
In Non-Selected Windows" it would be without hyphen "Cursor
In Non Selected Windows"), or to remove a redundant package prefix
like the Tooltip groups does (it uses e.g. :tag "Hide Delay" for
tooltip-hide-delay).  In this case the variable name can be easily
deduced from the tag name.

> 2. "Blink interval in seconds." - similarly to "Delay in seconds".
>
> 3. "Hourglass pointer" - The help doesn't say when (under what
>    circumstances) the pointer is changed to an hourglass. At least in
>    Windows, I haven't yet seen the hourglass, after turning this on.

On GNU/Linux the hourglass pointer can be seen, for instance, after
evaluating `(dotimes (i 10000000))'.  I don't know about Windows.
If the hourglass pointer is not displayed on Windows, then probably
it is a bug.

I clarified the documentation string of hourglass-related
options, removed customization tags and capitalized the tag
of `cursor-in-non-selected-windows':

Index: lisp/frame.el
===================================================================
RCS file: /cvsroot/emacs/emacs/lisp/frame.el,v
retrieving revision 1.231
diff -c -r1.231 frame.el
*** lisp/frame.el       6 Dec 2005 12:43:47 -0000       1.231
--- lisp/frame.el       10 Dec 2005 10:17:18 -0000
***************
*** 1203,1209 ****
  (defcustom show-trailing-whitespace nil
    "*Non-nil means highlight trailing whitespace.
  This is done in the face `trailing-whitespace'."
-   :tag "Highlight trailing whitespace."
    :type 'boolean
    :group 'whitespace-faces)
  
--- 1214,1219 ----
***************
*** 1235,1247 ****
  
  (defcustom blink-cursor-delay 0.5
    "*Seconds of idle time after which cursor starts to blink."
-   :tag "Delay in seconds."
    :type 'number
    :group 'cursor)
  
  (defcustom blink-cursor-interval 0.5
    "*Length of cursor blink interval in seconds."
-   :tag "Blink interval in seconds."
    :type 'number
    :group 'cursor)
  
--- 1245,1255 ----
***************
*** 1317,1330 ****
  ;; Hourglass pointer
  
  (defcustom display-hourglass t
!   "*Non-nil means show an hourglass pointer when running under a window 
system."
!   :tag "Hourglass pointer"
    :type 'boolean
    :group 'cursor)
  
  (defcustom hourglass-delay 1
!   "*Seconds to wait before displaying an hourglass pointer."
!   :tag "Hourglass delay"
    :type 'number
    :group 'cursor)
  
--- 1325,1336 ----
  ;; Hourglass pointer
  
  (defcustom display-hourglass t
!   "*Non-nil to show an hourglass pointer when Emacs is busy on a window 
system."
    :type 'boolean
    :group 'cursor)
  
  (defcustom hourglass-delay 1
!   "*Seconds to wait before displaying an hourglass pointer when Emacs is 
busy."
    :type 'number
    :group 'cursor)
  
***************
*** 1333,1339 ****
    "*Non-nil means show a hollow box cursor in non-selected windows.
  If nil, don't show a cursor except in the selected window.
  Use Custom to set this variable to get the display updated."
!   :tag "Cursor in non-selected windows"
    :type 'boolean
    :group 'cursor
    :set #'(lambda (symbol value)
--- 1339,1345 ----
    "*Non-nil means show a hollow box cursor in non-selected windows.
  If nil, don't show a cursor except in the selected window.
  Use Custom to set this variable to get the display updated."
!   :tag "Cursor In Non-Selected Windows"
    :type 'boolean
    :group 'cursor
    :set #'(lambda (symbol value)

-- 
Juri Linkov
http://www.jurta.org/emacs/