Re: mh-e 6.2 imminent

[Mark D. Baushke]

Miles Bader <address@hidden> writes:

> "Stefan Monnier" <monnier+gnu/address@hidden> writes:
> > Don't take checkdoc too literally.  I for one strongly dislike the
> > idea of using -flag postfixes, as I've already mentioned somewhere,
> > among other things because it's not a widely followed convention
> > and because many boolean variables turn into 3-way (or more) variables
> > over time.
>
> I've never heard of this `convention,' and indeed, it sounds kind of
> dumb -- a `-flag' suffix doesn't really add any useful information
> (if you know the _meaning_ of a variable, then you already know whether
> it's boolean or not, and if you don't know the meaning, well, then it
> hardly helps you to know that it's boolean!).
>
> Why on earth does checkdoc try to enforce this?  Can we take that out?

I would certainly not complain about a configuration option to turn off
the `-flag' suffix convention.

However, at least a few of the variables that are going to be renamed
have what I consider to be a worse problem. They end with a `-p' suffix
which I really dislike for variables to have.

User defcustom variables:

   mh-bury-show-buffer       -> mh-bury-show-buffer-flag
   mh-clean-message-header   -> mh-clean-message-header-flag
   mh-do-not-confirm         -> mh-do-not-confirm-flag
   mh-insert-x-mailer-p      -> mh-insert-x-mailer-flag
   mh-recenter-summary-p     -> mh-recenter-summary-flag
   mh-reply-show-message-p   -> mh-reply-show-message-flag
   mh-show-use-goto-addr     -> mh-show-use-goto-addr-flag

Internal variables to be renamed:

   save-modification-flag-p  -> mh-save-modification-flag
   mh-page-to-next-msg-p     -> mh-page-to-next-msg-flag
   mh-mhn-compose-insert-p   -> mh-mhn-compose-insert-flag
   mh-nmh-p                  -> mh-nmh-flag

> [I have my own agendas of course -- I'd like to make checkdoc complain
> if people use a `-p' suffix for variables, or a `-face' suffix for
> faces...]

I would support such changes to checkdoc for the `-p' suffix.

Would you care to share the argument for the `-face' suffix?

I suspect that mh-e has some of these and if we are going to do
a renaming, we may as well try to accommodate all such changes
now rather than later.

Feel free to add comments to the SourceForge.Net bugid #627015

https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&atid=113357&aid=627015&group_id=13357

on this topic.

        Thanks,
        -- Mark