Re: Customize buttons that change user's custom fileshouldaskforconfirmation

[Lennart Borgman]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Richard Stallman" <address@hidden>
To: "Kim F. Storm" <address@hidden>


>     My claim is that he is familiar with an interface where a page has:
>
>      - N different options (N > 1)
>
>      - an "Apply" button  which saves and activates the changes,
>        but keep the page open.
>
>      - an "Ok", "Save" or "Finish" button which saves and activates the
>        changes, and closes the page
>
>      - a "Cancel" button which closes the page without saving or
activating.
>
>      - a "Reset to Defaults" button which removes all user customizations
>        and activates some "factory" determined set of defaults.
>
> I would like to move Customize in this direction.
> At least the default style of Customize.
>
> I don't mind if experts can customize it and make it do
> something different.

I think this would be a good solution. Though the discussion is intensive I
see no big difficulties to satisfy the different views this way. The expert
vs novice options for the Custom GUI could look something like this:

- A way to set/save individual options. This seems to be the most wanted. It
should then be hidden by default (for the novices).

- Showing/hiding some information, like the states of the items in the
customization buffer. Some information that are in itself valuable should
probably be off by default to make the Custom GUI more simple and in line
with what most users are accustomed too. Exactly which info is perhaps
difficult to say. I think however the different pieces should be possible to
hide/show individually (but buffer global to make it simple). I also suggest
that hiding/showing should be in the menu bar menus so that it easy to
change it while viewing a certain customization buffer.

- A very valuable idea in the current Custom GUI that is not really used
today is the small customization button. This should be enhanced with
visible state colors so that the user can get a quick overview over the
state of different options in the customization buffer. (But I still believe
these buttons should be hidden by default).

- Maybe a global "Set" buffon to turn on for the experts. I think however
this is less useful.

- Maybe something that means really "erase all customization done by
Custom". And a set/save version of this. This should not be buffer local,
but should erase the (custom-set-variables ...) in .emacs and do the
necessary changes in the current values (and maybe tell the user to restart
Emacs). This is of course something for the novices and it might be better
to tell the user how to do it by hand (editing .emacs).