Re: [PATCH] bookmark.el of edit-utils 1.43 (completing-read usage error)

Kyle> Adrian Aichner writes: How can "doing it right" (your wording ;) be WRONG? :-) Kyle> I think we should get used to using and seeing code like Kyle> this. Otherwise we'll never use new API features in the Kyle> packages. Having seen Kyle's explanation of how it works, I don't have trouble reading that code. In fact, most such code is going to be very stylized (drop the last few arguments). One possible solution would be to create a `backwards-compat' package that would provide wrappers for such functions (I don't know how to code this offhand so I'm not giving examples) that (1) somehow transfers the current definition of (eg) #'completing-read to someplace it can be found (maybe a property of 'completing-read?) and (2) redefines #'completing-read to call the old definition inside a condition-case of the stylized form. If this was done as a macro (I think it could easily be), functions whose APIs changed in incompatible ways would stand out like a sore thumb because the macro wouldn't be used. Then a package would simply do (unless (>= emacs-version api-version-package-uses) (require 'backwards-compat)) at load. New code bears very little burden. Old code doesn't break, it just runs slow enough that the users demands an upgrade ;-) And the `backwards-compat' package itself would thus document API changes. What do you think? -- University of Tsukuba Tennodai 1-1-1 Tsukuba 305-8573 JAPAN Institute of Policy and Planning Sciences Tel/fax: +81 (298) 53-5091 _________________ _________________ _________________ _________________ What are those straight lines for? "XEmacs rules."