From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Msuck: nntp://news.gmane.io/gmane.emacs.gnus.general/53814 Path: main.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Per Abrahamsen Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.gnus.general Subject: Re: defface/defcustom question Date: Mon, 25 Aug 2003 16:41:06 +0200 Organization: The Church of Emacs Sender: ding-owner@lists.math.uh.edu Message-ID: References: <84fzkb88a4.fsf@slowfox.is.informatik.uni-duisburg.de> <84llu3ht35.fsf@slowfox.is.informatik.uni-duisburg.de> <873cga92g6.fsf@wesley.springies.com> <87llu27jsf.fsf@wesley.springies.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: deer.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: sea.gmane.org 1061824501 26986 80.91.224.253 (25 Aug 2003 15:15:01 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@sea.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 25 Aug 2003 15:15:01 +0000 (UTC) Original-X-From: ding-owner+M2357@lists.math.uh.edu Mon Aug 25 17:14:59 2003 Return-path: Original-Received: from malifon.math.uh.edu ([129.7.128.13]) by deer.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 3.35 #1 (Debian)) id 19rJ3b-0000LX-00 for ; Mon, 25 Aug 2003 17:14:59 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1] helo=lists.math.uh.edu) by malifon.math.uh.edu with smtp (Exim 3.20 #1) id 19rIvH-0005lp-00; Mon, 25 Aug 2003 10:06:23 -0500 Original-Received: from sclp3.sclp.com ([64.157.176.121]) by malifon.math.uh.edu with smtp (Exim 3.20 #1) id 19rIdS-0005fO-00 for ding@lists.math.uh.edu; Mon, 25 Aug 2003 09:47:58 -0500 Original-Received: (qmail 67799 invoked by alias); 25 Aug 2003 14:41:11 -0000 Original-Received: (qmail 67787 invoked from network); 25 Aug 2003 14:41:10 -0000 Original-Received: from main.gmane.org (80.91.224.249) by sclp3.sclp.com with SMTP; 25 Aug 2003 14:41:10 -0000 Original-Received: from list by main.gmane.org with local (Exim 3.35 #1 (Debian)) id 19rIXe-0000o7-00 for ; Mon, 25 Aug 2003 16:41:58 +0200 Mail-Followup-To: ding@gnus.org X-Injected-Via-Gmane: http://gmane.org/ Original-To: ding@gnus.org Original-Received: from sea.gmane.org ([80.91.224.252]) by main.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 3.35 #1 (Debian)) id 19rIXd-0000nz-00 for ; Mon, 25 Aug 2003 16:41:57 +0200 Original-Received: from news by sea.gmane.org with local (Exim 3.35 #1 (Debian)) id 19rIWo-0005xh-00 for ; Mon, 25 Aug 2003 16:41:06 +0200 Original-Lines: 36 Original-X-Complaints-To: usenet@sea.gmane.org X-Face: +kRV2]2q}lixHkE{U)mY#+6]{AH=yN~S9@IFiOa@X6?GM|8MBp/ Mail-Copies-To: nobody User-Agent: Gnus/5.090007 (Oort Gnus v0.07) Emacs/21.1 (sparc-sun-solaris2.8) Cancel-Lock: sha1:R2BcTN8LJQmV75mP6+hLHVE3LGs= Precedence: bulk Xref: main.gmane.org gmane.emacs.gnus.general:53814 X-Report-Spam: http://spam.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.gnus.general:53814 Alan Shutko writes: > Simon Josefsson writes: > >> True. Hm. Using both a variable and a face seem to be common >> practice though, I wonder if there are other reasons. Maybe face >> inheritance is a recent feature? I dunno. > > I believe it is. The custom attribute is only from 2000, and I know > these faces are a lot older than that. Faces are oldest, customize in between, and face inheritance is newest. Emacs never really been consistent about whether to use variables to hold the faces, but before customize there was a great incentive to do so, as the pre-customize face API sucked. Often one would just do (defvar some-package-face 'bold "Face used by some package.") in order to avoid the problem of creating a face. If the user wanted some package to use italic instead, he'd (setq some-package-face 'italic) It had a nice feature that if bold looked ugly with his favorite face, he could change the bold face to something else, and many occurrences of bold in Emacs would adjust. It is probably simpler to just use a defface for new options these days, but if we remove the old variables we will break user customizations with setq like the above.