Re: Q: Making an XEmacs package

Jarl> Hi. Jarl> I am planning to make an XEmacs package one day (out of Jarl> eSMS) and needs some information of how to do that. There Jarl> will probably come a series of questions regarding this. Ask away ... Jarl> I partially document my experiences so I may come up with Jarl> some documentation patches for the lispref.texi file during Jarl> all this. Please don't give me a RTFM, since it may actually Jarl> be TFM I'm criticising. RTRM Read the right manual :-) See below. Jarl> In the lispref there's a section describing Defining Global Jarl> Variables. A lot of stuff regarding defvar is mentioned and Jarl> one should start the documentation string with an asteriks Jarl> to indicate it's a user option, the text also refers to the Jarl> function `edit-options' which is not declared in XEmacs. So Basic question: Which version of XEmacs are you using? Jarl> to me it looks like much of this information (even big parts Jarl> of lispref) is left-overs from GNU Emacs. As I see it Jarl> user-options should not be declared with `defvar', but Jarl> rather `defcustom'. does that make `defvar' obsolete? See documentation for defvar. It does not say it's obsolete in emacs-version "21.4 (patch 6) \"Common Lisp (candidate 1)\" XEmacs Lucid" However, the Custom interface will be easier for beginners and many packages have therefor migrated to use of defcustom. Jarl> Since a variable is either a "constant" that is not intended Jarl> for user modifications (using `defcons') or it's a user That's defconst, not defcons. Jarl> customisation (using `defcustom'), can anyone come up with Jarl> an example of when it's appropriate to use `defvar'? It's just the old, but still valid, way. Jarl> Can anyone point me to some documentation on how to make the Jarl> jump from a simple *.el-file to a real integrated XEmacs Jarl> package? A list of criterias on file/directory-structure, Sure, it's (Info-goto-node "(xemacs)Creating Packages") Jarl> etc. would be nice. Hope this helps, Adrian Jarl> Jarl -- Adrian Aichner mailto:adrian＠xemacs.org http://www.xemacs.org/