Re: printing.el v6.6.3

[Richard Stallman]

    (defun pr-command (command)
      "Return a full path specification for COMMAND.

In GNU, we have a convention that we use the term "path"
only for lists of directories to search.  I think what you
mean here is an absolute file name.  So certain names
should be changed.

pr-dosify-path actually operates on file names.  But I think the job
it does is no longer considered desirable; it should probably be
eliminated, not renamed.  The same for pr-unixify-path.  Eli,
what do you think?


However, I have to question the usefulness of the whole pr-path-alist
feature.  Many Emacs packages find commands to run.  Normally they
find these commands either through $PATH or through variables that
specify the command name (which can be a file name) to do a certain
job.

It seems to me that there is no particular reason to add this new
mechanism for printing commands alone.  It makes Emacs as a whole
incoherent, and it is unnecessary complexity.  We should just tell
people, "either put those directories in $PATH or set the following
six variables".

If we do add a hairy method for finding commands, we should add it for
all of Emacs, and integrate it with Custom.  But I think this is not
important and we should not do it at all.