Re: Verbosity patch for custom-load-symbol

[David Reitter]

On 22 Apr 2006, at 13:03, Richard Stallman wrote:

>     Here is a little patch for custom.el which prevents it from
>     displaying unnecessary messages that can be confusing at times  
> (e.g.
>     "loading battery" when a user selects "Save Options").
>
> Why do you think that hiding the loading message is important?
> Is there some reason it is particularly confusing?

Yes - it's information overload. Giving the user information they  
don't need is never a good idea, unless your product needs to be  
debugged and informational messages are important.

I was actually asked why something like "battery" is loaded when  
they're just saving options.

Calls to `require' don't show a "loaded.." message, so why should  
`custom-load-symbol' do so?


> Why does it load files in order to save options?

`custom-load-symbol' is called for every saved variable by `customize- 
mark-to-save', I believe in order to load its default. That was a fix  
for a bug that I reported a while ago.

revision 1.122
date: 2006-02-20 15:59:51 +0000;  author: cyd;  state: Exp;  lines:  
+2 -0
        * custom.el (customize-mark-to-save, customize-mark-as-set): Load
        the symbol first.