Functional complaint, customize library

Functional complaint, customize library

[Karl Kleinpaste]

In a CMU-local chat system this morning, there's been an argu^H^H^Hdiscussion
about the customization of fonts and colors in Gnus.  It seems that a
lot of folks are uptight at the fact that there's a bunch of things to 
change, instead of some monolithic way to pick a whole color scheme at 
once, or at least to change everything to a single color.  A primary
plaintiff in this says that he would really like not to have to go
through a set of a dozen different color/font selections, but instead
could say "change all foreground colors to MidnightBlue and don't
bother me about it any more."  The related "scheme" idea comes from
the Windows-centric crowd, where there are ways of picking a whole
selection of quasi-matched colors for one's basic environment.

I've never so much as glanced at the internals of customize.  Any
opinions out there on how hard it would be to create such things as
"scheme"-based color choices (with a few such sample schemes to start
with) and an aggressive change-all-of-'em-in-this-group-to-this-color
function?

--karl

Re: Functional complaint, customize library

[Per Abrahamsen]

The themes idea has come up several times.  It does require some
careful conciderations if you want to do it right, but not a huge
project either.  Especially compared to the benefits.  Nobody has
volunteered for doing the work, though.

I find the other idea totally unfascinating.

Discussion about themes (and that other thing) should probably go to
<URL:mailto:emacs-custom@sunsite.auc.dk>, replies redirected there.

Karl Kleinpaste <karl@jprc.com> writes:

> In a CMU-local chat system this morning, there's been an argu^H^H^Hdiscussion
> about the customization of fonts and colors in Gnus.  It seems that a
> lot of folks are uptight at the fact that there's a bunch of things to 
> change, instead of some monolithic way to pick a whole color scheme at 
> once, or at least to change everything to a single color.  A primary
> plaintiff in this says that he would really like not to have to go
> through a set of a dozen different color/font selections, but instead
> could say "change all foreground colors to MidnightBlue and don't
> bother me about it any more."  The related "scheme" idea comes from
> the Windows-centric crowd, where there are ways of picking a whole
> selection of quasi-matched colors for one's basic environment.
> 
> I've never so much as glanced at the internals of customize.  Any
> opinions out there on how hard it would be to create such things as
> "scheme"-based color choices (with a few such sample schemes to start
> with) and an aggressive change-all-of-'em-in-this-group-to-this-color
> function?
> 
> --karl

Re: Functional complaint, customize library

[Scott Blachowicz]

Karl Kleinpaste <karl@jprc.com> wrote:

> The related "scheme" idea comes from the Windows-centric crowd, where there
> are ways of picking a whole selection of quasi-matched colors for one's
> basic environment.

Doesn't HP VUE/CDE have color schemes too?

Scott.Blachowicz@seaslug.org

Re: Functional complaint, customize library

[Karl Kleinpaste]

Stainless Steel Rat <ratinox@peorth.gweep.net> writes:
> This alone is the first half-dozen reasons why I don't like it.  Which is
> why I use this patch against cus-face.el:

I'd be interested in trying this out for the local population, but
offhand I can't see how to apply the patch -- it seems to have an
empty intersection against the custom package I have (which is what
came with XEmacs 20.4).

Whap me once hard with a clue hammer if need be, but (e.g.) the symbol
custom-get-frame-properties does not occur anywhere in any of the
custom/cus*.el files in my installation, and patch(1) is understandably
reluctant to help.

--karl

Re: Functional complaint, customize library

[Hrvoje Niksic]

Stainless Steel Rat <ratinox@peorth.gweep.net> writes:

> PA> The themes idea has come up several times.  It does require some
          ^^^^^^^^^^^
> PA> careful conciderations if you want to do it right, but not a huge
> PA> project either.  Especially compared to the benefits.  Nobody has
> PA> volunteered for doing the work, though.
> 
> Um, Per?  I have *repeatedly* requested this, and I even provided a
> patch that accomplishes it (I just reposted it for the umpteenth
> time).

Your patch doesn't implement themes.  It doesn't even define a way to
set all the colors to a value.  It only allows one to turn off all the
colors.

-- 
Hrvoje Niksic <hniksic@srce.hr> | Student at FER Zagreb, Croatia
--------------------------------+--------------------------------
Then...  his face does a complete change of expression.  It goes from
a "Vengeance is mine" expression, to a "What the fuck" blank look.

Re: Functional complaint, customize library

[Karl Kleinpaste]

Stainless Steel Rat <ratinox@peorth.gweep.net> writes:
> The patch has worked against all version of cus-face since back in the Red
> Gnus development cycle right up to the current version, 1.996 or so, at
> least as far as I have been able to determine.  Just use your handy-dandy
> "patch" as with any other context diff.

Maybe you should contemplate reading my entire note, specifically:

: Whap me once hard with a clue hammer if need be, but (e.g.) the symbol
: custom-get-frame-properties does not occur anywhere in any of the
: custom/cus*.el files in my installation, and PATCH(1) IS UNDERSTANDABLY
: RELUCTANT TO HELP.

Note transcript:

pocari-sweat: patch cus-face.el < ../Mail/list/ding/16443
Hmm...  Looks like a new-style context diff to me...
The text leading up to this was:
--------------------------
	[ deletia of mail headers &c. ]
|
|Hooray, custom.
|
|This alone is the first half-dozen reasons why I don't like it.  Which is
|why I use this patch against cus-face.el:
|
|*** cus-face.el.orig   Sat Sep 13 09:43:22 1997
|- --- cus-face.el      Sun Sep 21 00:02:28 1997
--------------------------
Patching file cus-face.el using Plan A...
patch: **** unexpected end of hunk at line 71
pocari-sweat: echo $?
1
pocari-sweat: grep custom-get-frame-properties cus-face.el 
pocari-sweat: grep -i version custom.el
;; Version: 1.9960-x
;; the Free Software Foundation; either version 2, or (at your option)
;; any later version.
  ;; Maybe this option was rogue in an earlier version.  It no longer is.
pocari-sweat: 

Considering that your patch references line 470 in cus-face.el, and my 
cus-face.el is only 255 lines long, it's just possible that one of our 
versions is out of date.  I've stipulated the version I'm using above,
which appears to be later than yours.  Notably, as the grep above
shows, your patch contains references to symbols which simply do not
exist in the version I've got.

My system also has FSFmacs 20.2 installed, whose cus-face.el is only
172 lines long, in which custom.el claims to be version 1.9900.

Re: Functional complaint, customize library

[Hrvoje Niksic]

Stainless Steel Rat <ratinox@peorth.gweep.net> writes:

> KK> My system also has FSFmacs 20.2 installed,
> 
> I would say that is a problem right there.  Your 1.9960-x has apparantly
> been rmssed much like everything else he gets his hands on... in this case
> probably to remove any of the XEmacs-specific code.

I feel very strange jumping into Stallman's defense, but the changes
to cus-face mostly have to do with merging the code into faces.el.  He 
didn't have a special intention to remove XEmacs-specific code,
because he left it in wid-edit.el (which has *lots* of compatibility
code).

Your patch also fails to apply on XEmacs 20.3 and above.

> Besides, as far as I am concerned, FSF Emacs 20.whatever is anathema
> for reasons I would rather not go into yet again.

You will probably have to, because FSF 20.3 improved many things in
MULE support.  It appears that their implementation is (almost)
decent, this time around.

Or, did you mean Custom?

-- 
Hrvoje Niksic <hniksic@srce.hr> | Student at FER Zagreb, Croatia
--------------------------------+--------------------------------
Ask not for whom the <CONTROL-G> tolls.

Re: Functional complaint, customize library

[Per Abrahamsen]

Stainless Steel Rat <ratinox@peorth.gweep.net> writes:

> I think "the default text color" is a perfectly valid value. 

Perfectly valid, and perfectly irrelevant.

To the rest of you: Mr. Rat doesn't know what he is talking about.
Since he is being deliberately insulting in the rest of the message,
I'm not going to try to educate him.  One of the things you have to
learn as a freeware author, is to ignore all the jerks out there.
They take your time, remove the fun from the work, and give you
nothing back.  Acording to them, the whole world should revolve around
their specific needs.

Re: Functional complaint, customize library

[Per Abrahamsen]

Stainless Steel Rat <ratinox@peorth.gweep.net> writes:

> >>>>> "PA" == Per Abrahamsen <abraham@dina.kvl.dk> writes:
> 
> PA> The themes idea has come up several times.  It does require some
> PA> careful conciderations if you want to do it right, but not a huge
> PA> project either.  Especially compared to the benefits.  Nobody has
> PA> volunteered for doing the work, though.
> 
> Um, Per?  I have *repeatedly* requested this, and I even provided a patch
> that accomplishes it (I just reposted it for the umpteenth time). 

No, you have not implemented themes.  You have implemented an
alternative way to set the `display-type' frame parameter to `mono'.
That wasn't what Karl asked for.

Re: Functional complaint, customize library

[Jake Colman]

>>>>> "Hrvoje" == Hrvoje Niksic <hniksic@srce.hr> writes:


    Hrvoje> You will probably have to, because FSF 20.3 improved many things in
    Hrvoje> MULE support.  It appears that their implementation is (almost)
    Hrvoje> decent, this time around.

Has this been generally released or is 20.3 still in beta test?

-- 
Jake Colman                     

Principia Partners LLC                  Phone: (201) 946-0300
Harborside Financial Center               Fax: (201) 946-0320
902 Plaza II                           Beeper: (800) 505-2795
Jersey City, NJ 07311                  E-mail: colman@ppllc.com
                                       E-mail: jcolman@jnc.com
                                          web: http://www.ppllc.com

Re: Functional complaint, customize library

[Alan Shutko]

>>>>> "J" == Jake Colman <colman@ppllc.com> writes:

J> Has this been generally released or is 20.3 still in beta test?

Emacs 20.3 just went into pretesting last week.  It'll be out in a few
weeks, where few is yet to be determined.  8^)

-- 
Alan Shutko <ats@acm.org> - By consent of the corrupted
Chinese saying: "He who speak with forked tongue, not need chopsticks."

Re: Functional complaint, customize library

[Hrvoje Niksic]

Jake Colman <colman@ppllc.com> writes:

> >>>>> "Hrvoje" == Hrvoje Niksic <hniksic@srce.hr> writes:
> 
> 
>     Hrvoje> You will probably have to, because FSF 20.3 improved
>     Hrvoje> many things in MULE support.  It appears that their
>     Hrvoje> implementation is (almost) decent, this time around.
> 
> Has this been generally released

To my knowledge, not yet.  It is supposed to be released soon,
though.

-- 
Hrvoje Niksic <hniksic@srce.hr> | Student at FER Zagreb, Croatia
--------------------------------+--------------------------------
We are all just prisoners here of our own MAKEDEV.