From xemacs-m  Tue Feb 11 01:11:36 1997
Received: from altair.xemacs.org (steve@xemacs.miranova.com [206.190.83.19])
	by xemacs.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id BAA18702
	for <xemacs-beta@xemacs.org>; Tue, 11 Feb 1997 01:11:35 -0600 (CST)
Received: (from steve@localhost)
	by altair.xemacs.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) id XAA11445;
	Mon, 10 Feb 1997 23:23:10 -0800
To: xemacs-beta@xemacs.org
Subject: Re: .xemacs-options gripe
References: <yvtbu9stk18.fsf@corona.pixar.com> <kigu3nk9vg3.fsf@jagor.srce.hr> <m2afpcuvac.fsf@altair.xemacs.org> <yvt20aotcff.fsf@corona.pixar.com>
X-Url: http://www.miranova.com/%7Esteve/
Mail-Copies-To: never
X-Face: #!T9!#9s-3o8)*uHlX{Ug[xW7E7Wr!*L46-OxqMu\xz23v|R9q}lH?cRS{rCNe^'[`^sr5"
 f8*@r4ipO6Jl!:Ccq<xoV[Qz2u8<8-+Vwf2gzJ44lf_/y9OaQ`@#Q65{U4/TC)i2`~/M&QI$X>p:9I
 OSS'2{-)-4wBnVeg0S\O4Al@)uC[pD|+
X-Attribution: sb
From: Steven L Baur <steve@miranova.com>
In-Reply-To: Hunter Kelly's message of 10 Feb 1997 16:27:00 -0800
Mime-Version: 1.0 (generated by tm-edit 7.103)
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Date: 10 Feb 1997 23:23:09 -0800
Message-ID: <m2rain7qn6.fsf@altair.xemacs.org>
Lines: 110
X-Mailer: Gnus v5.4.12/XEmacs 20.1

Hunter Kelly writes:

> Steven L Baur <steve@miranova.com> writes:
>> The options menu is not something I care much about fixing since the
>> intended upgrade to the future is Per Abrahamsen's Customize package.
>> With that in mind ...

> So do you plan to junk the options menu alltogether, or rewrite it
> such that it calls customize-stuff for the appropriate variables?

I really don't know how that's going to work out.

<BLUE SKY>
What I really want is some kind of hierarchical navigation of *all*
user options by package, accessible by some kind of friendly interface
and saved in some kind of format that doesn't force everything to be
evaluated at once.
</BLUE SKY>

Custom comes the closest to what I currently envision.

>> This isn't quite the division I would envision.  It makes more sense
>> to load the fonts only when they are ready to be used, i.e. the same
>> way we autoload most Lisp packages.

> Hmmm.  Since there a lot of packages that name their faces/fonts
> somethinge like foo-bold-face, where foo is the name of the package,
> would it make sense to have .xemacs-faces.foo, and then whenever "foo"
> is loaded or required, have the loader check for a .xemacs-faces.foo?
> I don't really care what the names are, I'm more concerned with the
> ideas, here.

Yes.  Or maybe inherit faces from font-lock.  Font-lock attempts to
abstract faces at least at a programming language level (comment-face,
keyword-face, etc.).  The more abstraction the better.  Related things
should be colored similarly.

>> I already do something like it with it Gnus.  I have a ton of faces
>> that I use only with Gnus, but they are only initialized when I am in
>> an XEmacs or Emacs that uses Gnus.

> Could you send me a copy of what you do for that?

My full .gnus has been posted multiple times to Usenet[1].  The gist of
what I do in terms of customization is:

  (setq custom-file "~/.gnus-custom")

  ;; Other settings based on what I'm trying to test

  (load "gnus-setup.el")

With all of the initialization deferred to the .gnus.

In .gnus:
(when (and (fboundp 'defcustom)
	   (file-exists-p (expand-file-name custom-file)))
  (defface gnus-summary-expirable-face
    '((((class color)
	(background dark))
       (:foreground "Orange"))
      (((class color)
	(background light))
       (:foreground "DarkOrange2"))
      (t 
       ()))
  "Face used for expirable articles.")

  (defface gnus-summary-high-dormant-face
    '((((class color)
	(background dark))
       (:foreground "Brown" :bold t))
      (((class color)
	(background light))
       (:foreground "Brown" :bold t))
      (t 
       ()))
  "Face used for high interest ticked articles.")

  ;;; Plus a few more elided for brevity sake

  (load custom-file))

I also test whether or not I'm already running a Gnus session, and if
not, I bypass even the rudimentary path setup.  My typical XEmacs
usage is to have one session dedicated to Gnus that stays up all day,
or as long as the binary it's running on remains alive.

>> The global `Save Options' precludes this.
>> 
>> Edit Faces needs some work.

> Edit faces needs much work.  So does the whole face/font model in
> general.  I know that Bill Perry has a whole bunch of stuff dealing
> with this, but I seem to remember that he wanted some kind of
> integration between Emacs and XEmacs at the C level, so that package
> authors would have a good model for this.  Has he talked to anyone
> (ie RMS) about this?  It sounds like a good idea to me, and I am
> willing to contribute to this, if people can point me to the
> starting line.

His starting point is font.el (the file that is currently causing all
of the strange DOC file creation warning messages).

[1]
I've posted my .gnus several times to Usenet by request, but I've
never seen Lars' .gnus.  I wonder what his looks like? :-)
-- 
steve@miranova.com baur
Unsolicited commercial e-mail will be billed at $250/message.

