Re: A proposal for a friendlier Emacs

[Alexander Adolf]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

> [...]
> No.  The problem I have in mind is that the user might decide to give
> a package some keyword when first installed, but then the user might
> wish to have the same package in another setup-KEYWORD.el file as
> well, because it is useful as part of another group of packages.

In that case, my idea would be that the user manually moves the block of
init code for the package in question (including magic comments) from
setup-A.el to setup-B.el.

I did _not_ have in mind that the user would be assigning any new
information (such as e.g. tags or categories) to the packages. My mental
model was that the packages "live" on ELPA, and are read-only as far the
Emacs user is concerned (as is the status-quo today).

In my model, the only purpose in life for the new attribute was to give
the init code block a default, initial place to store, and to allow the
user to override that place at package installation time.

As time goes by, and things evolve, the user is of course free to rename
init files, move config blocks between them, create new init files and
move existing blocks there, etc. For as long as the magic comments are
retained (maybe there's a better way than magic comments even), Custom
would be able to find stuff, maintain the (custom-set-*) blocks, and
things would go smoothly.


Cheers,

  --alexander