Re: Failure building packages (Vin Shelton)

On 01/08/2012 11:54 PM, Vin Shelton wrote: That is something that I had not considered--that any of the things we implemented would be new in 21.5, and be incompatible to 21.4. Are there other incompatibilities that I should check for? As an aside, I should check the manuals too, to see if things new in 21.5 are noted as being not in 21.4. I should probably also look and see how other packages use behaviors, if they do. I'm not sure how behaviors are normally used. The intent was to be a good citizen among packages; to have an elegant way to enable or disable the package functionality, without having to edit the init.el and restart XEmacs to be rid of a using the package. When you disable the functionality by toggling the menu item, it closes up shop in a decent way, returning the menu state and toolbar to the way it was before the behavior was enabled, except that the toggle for the behavior is still on the menu. I thought about some things under the Options menu that seem to be on the menu without me explicitly loading them, such as internet (I don't use mail but it is there to be enabled), also Display-->Scrollbars, which has a toggle on the menu whether it is enabled or not. Is the difference that they are not a package, so are allowed to have a toggle on the menu? Or maybe I am misunderstanding why they can be toggled but it is not a good idea for packages. I'm not resisting changing to not using behaviors, I'm just trying to be sure I have the straight of it. If the consensus of the group is to find another way than using behaviors, we will do so, either using Vin's patch or another way. Hmm. Why do they appear on stdin? is that the default maybe? Since we didn't explicitly tell them to appear on stdin, or anywhere else, I'm wondering what mechanism you use to make them appear any certain place. to continue your thought, that initialization function would be intended to be called upon loading the function? or when the init.el is loaded with a call to that function? I really like the Customize system, creating a buffer to customize a group of related variables is great. The only tiny flaw in it is you have to know that a customize group exists--and know it's name--before you can effectively use it. If want to change the foreground and background colors, for a simple example, you have to *know* that the face you want to edit is called the default face. Or else you select Options-->Advanced (Customize)-->Faces... and choose "default all" and peruse all faces (50+ faces) many of which have a Fg and Bg color, on the way to finding the face you are trying to modify. My point is there is required knowledge to use the customize system (in the example, the name of the face that you want to modify) that isn't given by the system at that point. You have to *discover* the name of the face you want to modify. That it is the default face *is* documented several places, but not where/when you need that knowledge to make a decision to modify it. That can be remedied 2 ways I can think of, but neither way is implemented right now. I can talk about that later, I don't want to get distracted. The point I am making is that in a similar way to the example I gave: new features have to be discovered. You don't know they are there, or that they are things that can be changed, until you find out some way. And if the "some way" isn't is handy as on the menu as a toggle, it may not be/isn't clear that a feature exists or can be changed. This stumbling block of not having a piece of knowledge is more a problem for new users than old hands. I am just explaining why I think having something toggled on the menu might be a good idea, but not saying that using behaviors is the best or only way. I'd like to hear more about how packages should interface with different versions of XEmacs and what tests you do to tell which one you are running under. Were behaviors started with 21.5.0? or at some later point? Regards, Steve Mitchell _______________________________________________ XEmacs-Beta mailing list XEmacs-Beta(a)xemacs.org http://lists.xemacs.org/mailman/listinfo/xemacs-beta