Re: Q: Making an XEmacs package

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. I think I committed a patch a few weeks ago describing my experiences with TRAMP and Mule-UCS. Anyway, the next releases of 21.4 and 21.5 should have a node in Lispref going into more detail about packaging libraries from the developer's point of view. There is definitely some material already in (xemacs)Packages. 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 This is used by (hyper-)?apropos. You should still do it in defcustoms. Jarl> As I see it user-options should not be declared with Jarl> `defvar', but rather `defcustom'. Yes. Jarl> does that make `defvar' obsolete? No. There are three possible declarations (that I know of). defcustom: A user option which has special support from the Custom libraries for easy maintenance. defvar: An internal variable which should _not_ be reinitialized on execution of the declaration if already bound. This can be used for communication among a group of cooperating packages, and also avoids a lot of inconvenience in the edit-compile-load-test cycle. Note that if you really want to have the initialization done, you just need to execute the defvar form interactively. This is an excellent compromise AFAICT. defconst: An internal variable which _should_ be reinitialized every time the declaration is executed. Often used for constants, but there are other uses. -- Institute of Policy and Planning Sciences http://turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp University of Tsukuba Tennodai 1-1-1 Tsukuba 305-8573 JAPAN Don't ask how you can "do" free software business; ask what your business can "do for" free software.