Re: A new filter-based customization interface

[Björn Bidar]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

> [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
> [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
> [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
>
>   > I added a screenshot of what such an interface might look like (which
>   > is better than words).  https://justpaste.it/fdau4.
>
> That site seems to depend on nonfree Javascript code.  Those of us who
> block nonfree Javascript. or block Javascript entirely, cannot see
> whatever you meant to show us.

The website works entirely without JavaScript.
But there you go:
https://jpcdn.it/img/bde00610157f1ad327d8d066d5bc1744.png

> Even worse, there are people on the lis who do not block nonfree
> Javascript in their browsers.  By referring to that site, you are
> promoting the use of nonfree software!  And, in the process,
> legitimizing the use and distrbution of nonfree software -- which is
> the direct opposite of the goal of GNU.

People promote non-free software all the on this list e.g. with
@gmail in their addresses or talk about non-free operating systems.
There's even a package solely to support non-free software in Elpa.

> Would you please describe or present your idea in a way that we can
> understand without running nonfree software?  Then we could all think
> about adding it to Emacs.

Emails allow for attachments.

> Emacs already has a general configuration interface, which you can
> access using M-x configure.  It at least tries to do what you have in
> mind.  Your approach, if implemented without nonfree software,
> might be better in some ways.

> Would you like to familiarize yourself with M-x configure and related
> commands, see what it does and what it doesn't do, and describe
> your idea in terms of how it differs from what we already have?
>
> Do the differences concern manner of display, or the semantics
> of the customization methods?


The configure interface looks at times very old. I.e. in context of the
search it is very hard to see what the results actually are yes it does
show categories and settings items but it doesn't not show where they
are from e.g. as in which catergory a item is from or what tags it could
have.
I'm aware that Custom doesn't track tags but it is expected that most
system do use them or at least understand them for searching.

> M-x configure displays through Emacs buffers and Emacs redisplay
> because that is the facility that is always avaiable (in Emacs).
> Using some other basis could look nicer, but would be a lot more work
> to implement and to maintain in various situations.

The problem isn't eye-candy, functionality is the problem, e.g. in
discoverability. Improvements would help mostly beginner level users but
also long term users could benefit.
It does not help either that Emacs is not responding while searching.