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Re: doc of defining minor modes


From: David Kastrup
Subject: Re: doc of defining minor modes
Date: Fri, 19 May 2006 19:52:33 +0200
User-agent: Gnus/5.11 (Gnus v5.11) Emacs/22.0.50 (gnu/linux)

"Drew Adams" <address@hidden> writes:

>     > It's not obvious to readers of the doc why we provide an :init-value
>     > possibility and yet we warn people not to use it (except in a
>     > rare case). There needs to be a good explanation of this uncommon
>     > coupling. The explanation needs to indicate how the problem that the
>     > admonition hopes to prevent could arise, that is, _how_ a library
>     > might get loaded without being loaded directly by the user.
>     > That is not obvious.
>
>     I don't think it's worth the trouble to write a long explanation.
>     It's perfectly OK to have arguments and features marked as
>     "don't ever use this unless you really know what you're doing".
>
> It's more like "don't use this if you _know_ what you're doing and your
> library is exceptional" (large, complex, coupled with other libraries,
> preloaded,...).
>
> The typical, simple case of a standalone external library will not
> be preloaded or required by another library, it will not have
> autoload cookies, and it would never be loaded behind the user's
> back.

I don't know what universe you are living in, but practically _all_
external Elisp I know comes with instructions of what to put into your
.emacs or elsewhere so that the file will get loaded on-demand.  And
if the package is somewhat larger, it will come with its own stub file
for achieving this.

> I think it's worth pointing out what the potential but uncommon
> problem is.

The problem is common, and that's why we bothered with it.

>     The problem is that we can't integrate such a package into Emacs
>     without first fixing this behavior.  So of course we don't
>     encourage that.
>
> Changing :init-value t to :init-value nil would be the least of your
> integration worries.

There is no sense in having a library behave differently once it is
included in Emacs.

> I really don't see that concern as justification for such a blanket
> admonition.

You are being obnoxious.  It has been pointed out to you about a dozen
times that this was not done on accident, has been discussed before,
and you were asked to stop ignoring the decision that has already been
reached and explained to you.  Not least of all by Richard.

Your opinion is different.  Guess what, we noticed.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum




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