Re: Propose to add setup-wizard.el to ELPA

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Stefan Kangas <stefankangas@gmail.com>
> Date: Sun, 2 Jan 2022 10:27:28 -0500
> Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org
> 
> xenodasein--- via "Emacs development discussions." <emacs-devel@gnu.org>
> writes:
> 
> > FWIW I completely agree with this.  Custom system is a good idea,
> > and it should exist; however it has a very long way yet to achieve
> > it's purpose.  It is nowhere near JetBrains software's isolation
> > of Java from user.  It needs a lot more work.  It is an unfinished system.
> 
> Agreed, but I'd invite you to be more concrete.  If you are proposing a
> redesign, fine, but we'd need volunteers to do that.  If you have
> specific proposals for how to improve customize, they are also welcome.

Improving Customize (or any other major Emacs infrastructure) is
always welcome, of course.  But I'd like to point out a potential
confusion or misunderstanding between the participants in this thread:
I think people might mix Customize's user-facing interface -- the
forms, the buttons, the menus in Custom buffers, etc. -- with calling
Customize functions from Lisp and with its implementation code.  When
people say here they think Custom has a long way to achieve its
purpose, which of those two they allude to?

Customize was designed to be easy on the user from the UI POV, it
wasn't designed to be easy from the implementation POV.  Nor was it
designed to be easy to understand its Lisp forms, because the
assumption was that people who'd use Customize will rarely if ever
look at the forms it produces when you save customizations.