March 1999 - XEmacs-Beta - XEmacs Mailing List Archives

Re: the role of Custom in XEmacs (setting != saving) 25 years, 8 months

Didier Verna

Hrvoje Niksic writes: Hrvoje> Something must be wrong here. Don't "he" and "il" clearly mark the Hrvoje> surgeon as a male? I'm not even sure for the french :-) I could have written "the surgeon sees him and exclaims" instead. Hrvoje> By the little French that I have, it would seem very strange that *le* Hrvoje> chirurgien can mean a female surgeon. It does. That's part of the debate. Hrvoje> Shouldn't it be "la chirurgien"? Hrvoje> Would "la chirurgien" even Hrvoje> make sense in French? No. "La chirurgienne" would. But it's not supposed to exist. -- / / _ _ Didier Verna http://www.inf.enst.fr/~verna/ - / / - / / /_/ / E.N.S.T. INF C201.1 mailto:verna＠inf.enst.fr /_/ / /_/ / /__ / 46 rue Barrault Tel. (33) 01 45 81 73 46 75634 Paris cedex 13 Fax. (33) 01 45 81 31 19

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Re: the role of Custom in XEmacs (setting != saving) 25 years, 8 months

Hrvoje Niksic

Pete Ware <ware(a)cis.ohio-state.edu> writes: > How amusing. It's not difficult to get english to be gender neutral > (it's only the occasional noun like chairman, mailman, stewardess) > that needs a "fixing", but languages with most nouns being either > feminine or masculine -- what a nightmare. Oh, I don't think you're quite hitting the point here. Yes, it's true that in many languages most nouns are feminine or masculine -- French and Croatian are such (e.g. in Croatian, a table is "male", while a chair is "female". As a school joke goes, it's not by chance that death is female, while life is male, disease is female, while health is male (ok, neutral), etc.) Croatian works in a different way than English -- we have suffixes that modify the gender of words that denote occupation. For example, policeman is /policajac/, while policewoman is /policajka/, or doctor is /liječnik/, while a female doctor is /liječnica/. Additionally, each of these forms has its own plural: /liječnici/ means two or more male doctors, while /liječnice/ means two or more female doctors. At least we have a word to denote "man" without implying gender (English "man or woman" PC looks ugly to me.) Croatia is still very far from having a serious discussion about this -- so far noone has cared about those issues (except for a small feminist minority.) Perhaps it's better that way -- there are much more important issues to worry about.

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Re: the role of Custom in XEmacs (setting != saving) 25 years, 8 months

Hrvoje Niksic

Didier Verna <verna(a)inf.enst.fr> writes: > - Un pčre et son fils font de l'escalade. Le fils tombe et se blesse > gravement. Son pčre l'emmčne aussitôt ŕ l'hopital, et quand le chirurgien le > voit, il s'écrie: ŤMais je ne peux pas l'opérer! C'est mon fils!ť. ^^ > - A father and his son are climbing a moutain. The boy falls and seriously > injurs himself. The father immediately gets him to the hospital, and when the > surgeon sees him, he exclaims: "But I can't operate him! He's my son!". ^^ Something must be wrong here. Don't "he" and "il" clearly mark the surgeon as a male? > Most people can't find the key because in french, "le chirurgien" > (the surgeon) is a male-only expression which also designates a > female surgeon[1]. By the little French that I have, it would seem very strange that *le* chirurgien can mean a female surgeon. Shouldn't it be "la chirurgien"? Would "la chirurgien" even make sense in French?

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Re: the role of Custom in XEmacs (setting != saving) 25 years, 8 months

Pete Ware

Didier Verna <verna(a)inf.enst.fr> writes: > - A father and his son are climbing a moutain. The boy falls and seriously > injurs himself. The father immediately gets him to the hospital, and when the > surgeon sees him, he exclaims: "But I can't operate him! He's my son!". > </mule> The _exact_ same riddle exists in english without any gender pronouns except father. [I started to write more on this but its really not relavent.] --pete

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Re: the role of Custom in XEmacs (setting != saving) 25 years, 8 months

Didier Verna

Pete Ware writes: Pete> How amusing. It's not difficult to get english to be gender neutral Pete> (it's only the occasional noun like chairman, mailman, stewardess) that Pete> needs a "fixing", but languages with most nouns being either feminine or Pete> masculine -- what a nightmare. At this point, I'd just assumed such Pete> cultures were smart enough to ignore the issue. They aren't. In France the "Acad�mie Fran�aise" is constitued of people who are notoriously narrow minded and old fashioned. Howver, not everybody thinks that the issue should be just ignored; I'm not particularly convinced myself. When faced with the sexism we still have in many professions (politics, to begin with), you end up thinking that you won't be able to shake the tradition without shaking the words first. There's a funny riddle for which most people can't find the key. I'll give it in french for those who can understand, with a translation: - Un p�re et son fils font de l'escalade. Le fils tombe et se blesse gravement. Son p�re l'emm�ne aussit�t � l'hopital, et quand le chirurgien le voit, il s'�crie: �Mais je ne peux pas l'op�rer! C'est mon fils!�. <mule> - A father and his son are climbing a moutain. The boy falls and seriously injurs himself. The father immediately gets him to the hospital, and when the surgeon sees him, he exclaims: "But I can't operate him! He's my son!". </mule> Most people can't find the key because in french, "le chirurgien" (the surgeon) is a male-only expression which also designates a female surgeon[1]. But people don't think of it and conclude that the boy can't have two fathers. Words can indeed carry perverse ideas. Footnotes: [1] "La chirurgienne", the logical equivalent, doesn't exist. -- / / _ _ Didier Verna http://www.inf.enst.fr/~verna/ - / / - / / /_/ / E.N.S.T. INF C201.1 mailto:verna＠inf.enst.fr /_/ / /_/ / /__ / 46 rue Barrault Tel. (33) 01 45 81 73 46 75634 Paris cedex 13 Fax. (33) 01 45 81 31 19

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Re: the role of Custom in XEmacs (setting != saving) 25 years, 8 months

Pete Ware

Per Abrahamsen <abraham(a)dina.kvl.dk> writes: > > Footnotes: > > [1] It's completely off-topic, but in France, there's a debate on > > feminization of several words describing professions for instance. > > Historically, some professions were reserved for men which explains why > > nowadays we lack many feminin equivalents. >... > Any profession that used to have two names now only has one name, >... > Any profession that used to have a single name now has two names, ... How amusing. It's not difficult to get english to be gender neutral (it's only the occasional noun like chairman, mailman, stewardess) that needs a "fixing", but languages with most nouns being either feminine or masculine -- what a nightmare. At this point, I'd just assumed such cultures were smart enough to ignore the issue. --pete

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Re: the role of Custom in XEmacs (setting != saving) 25 years, 8 months

Didier Verna

Per Abrahamsen writes: Per> I don't know. I don't like the interface provided by these two functions, You mean the custom ones that don't require the graphical interface right? Per> and prefer the raw `set-variable' myself. Yup. Per> Perhaps we should rename `set-variable' to `set-variable-temporarily', Per> and then make a new `set-variable' that updated the `customized-value' Per> attribute, but ignores the `custom-type' attribute. Per> Or was this what you meant? Yes. I've never used custom-set-variable directly, so I couldn't tell how much I like its interface and its usage of completion mechanisms. However, it seems a good idea to me that set-variable updates `customized-value'. -- / / _ _ Didier Verna http://www.inf.enst.fr/~verna/ - / / - / / /_/ / E.N.S.T. INF C201.1 mailto:verna＠inf.enst.fr /_/ / /_/ / /__ / 46 rue Barrault Tel. (33) 01 45 81 73 46 75634 Paris cedex 13 Fax. (33) 01 45 81 31 19

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Re: the role of Custom in XEmacs (setting != saving) 25 years, 8 months

Didier Verna

Per Abrahamsen writes: Per> You can for example use the command `customize-save-variable' to set and Per> save a variable, without ever entering the customize buffer. Per> Or you can use `customize-set-variable' to set options (without entering Per> a customize buffer), and then later `customize-save-customized' to save Per> them later. Both commands can be called from Lisp to build other user Per> interfaces. I believe the XEmacs Options menu does exactly that. Hmmm, funny I wrote it and forgot the functions existed. Maybe the interface, notably the names, should be made a bit more intuitive. Since Custom is the primary method for declaring and saving options, maybe set-variable should act like a custom function, and then we would add something like `set-variable-temporarily' or something. -- / / _ _ Didier Verna http://www.inf.enst.fr/~verna/ - / / - / / /_/ / E.N.S.T. INF C201.1 mailto:verna＠inf.enst.fr /_/ / /_/ / /__ / 46 rue Barrault Tel. (33) 01 45 81 73 46 75634 Paris cedex 13 Fax. (33) 01 45 81 31 19

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[..offtopic] 25 years, 8 months

Tor Arntsen

On Mar 18, 13:14, Per Abrahamsen wrote: >In Denmark the debate occured in the 70'ies. Basically, the result is: > >Any profession that used to have two names now only has one name, >because having two names implies that women are not capable of doing >the same job as men. > >Any profession that used to have a single name now has two names, >because having one name implied that the profession was reserved for a >single gender, thus degrading women. In Norway the debate mostly didn't occur, what happened was that the professions quietly changed to neuter names. The one remaining problem is what to do with profession names with 'man' in them (I guess 'ombudsman' would be one of them).

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Re: the role of Custom in XEmacs (setting != saving) 25 years, 8 months

Didier Verna

Per Abrahamsen writes: Per> I think I'm getting it now. You want more `setq' variants. Per> 1: The user has explicitly asked for this variable to be changed for the Per> rest of this session, but don't want it to be saved. Per> 2: The user has explicitly set this variable, and also ensured that it Per> will remain set. Per> Customize could certainly use that information. Something like this. The point is that we should also make it clear for the users what it is all about: there are lisp variables, specifiers, whatever, and part of this stuff has the property that the user can modify it and possibly save the modifications for all sessions. Now Custom really belongs to the core of XEmacs. However, from outside, it still looks like an add-on package and people don't realize that the notion of user option is not really related to custom (as a package) but something general in Emacs. The 'custom- prefix everywhere doesn't help them much. Also, there are other things that I was thinking about, which I find feasable: say you have customized a variable, saved it some time ago. Maybe you also have it set from X resources on several machines. Now you realize that your setting is not valid when you're on a tty or anything, and then you decide to actually write it in init.el, inside a `window-system' check, with a nice comment saying why you do this. I think it would be nice to get a warning at the next session that an init.el setting might override a customized value, and possibly that there are conflicts with X resources as well. Per> Any profession that used to have two names now only has one name, because Per> having two names implies that women are not capable of doing the same job Per> as men. Per> Any profession that used to have a single name now has two names, because Per> having one name implied that the profession was reserved for a single Per> gender, thus degrading women. Geeze, we're not the only twisted minds on earth ;-) -- / / _ _ Didier Verna http://www.inf.enst.fr/~verna/ - / / - / / /_/ / E.N.S.T. INF C201.1 mailto:verna＠inf.enst.fr /_/ / /_/ / /__ / 46 rue Barrault Tel. (33) 01 45 81 73 46 75634 Paris cedex 13 Fax. (33) 01 45 81 31 19

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XEmacs-Beta March 1999