Re: Rationale for .xemacs configuration structure

The following message is a courtesy copy of an article that has been posted to comp.emacs.xemacs as well. Shaddy> Where can I read the rationale behind the change to a Shaddy> .xemacs configuration structure? I do want to run GNU Hi Shaddy, I agree that XEmacs documentation on this issue is too hard to find and mostly outdated. All of these are no longer accurate for 21.4 and 21.5: http://www.xemacs.org/Documentation/21.5/html/lispref_54.html#SEC725 http://www.xemacs.org/Documentation/21.5/html/xemacs_30.html#SEC377 http://www.xemacs.org/cgi-bin/namazu.cgi?query=.xemacs&whence=0&l... Here's the best I can find: http://www.xemacs.org/Documentation/21.5/html/custom_6.html Shaddy> Emacs and XEmacs concurrently, and as I can see, only Shaddy> XEmacs specific, non-Customize configuration, should go Shaddy> into .xemacs/init.el, so am really questioning using this Shaddy> at all. I understand that it is acceptable to use just Shaddy> .emacs, but with the rationale, perhaps I can be persuaded Shaddy> to use another arrangement. Shaddy> Also, is it wrong for Emacs and XEmacs to share Customize Shaddy> configuration? I noticed that XEmacs wasn't to happy about You're taking chances to share them, since there is no formal contract to keep customization interfaces compatible between Emacs and XEmacs, even though lately cooperation is improving. Shaddy> adding Customizations to .emacs with GNU Emacs generated Shaddy> Customizations. Attempting to save a Customization of Shaddy> variable "c-echo-syntactic-information-p" for example, on Shaddy> a .emacs file with the content following, resulted in a Shaddy> "Wrong type argument: stringp, nil" errors: Shaddy> <snip> Shaddy> (custom-set-variables Shaddy> ;; custom-set-variables was added by Custom -- don't edit or cut/paste it! Shaddy> ;; Your init file should contain only one such instance. Shaddy> '(auto-insert t) Shaddy> '(auto-insert-mode t nil (autoinsert)) Shaddy> '(case-fold-search t) Shaddy> '(current-language-environment "Latin-1") Shaddy> '(custom-file nil) Shaddy> '(default-input-method "latin-1-prefix") Shaddy> '(global-font-lock-mode t nil (font-lock)) Shaddy> '(indent-tabs-mode nil) Shaddy> '(load-home-init-file t t) Shaddy> '(show-paren-mode t nil (paren)) Shaddy> '(tab-width 4) Shaddy> '(transient-mark-mode t)) Shaddy> (custom-set-faces Shaddy> ;; custom-set-faces was added by Custom -- don't edit or cut/paste it! Shaddy> ;; Your init file should contain only one such instance. Shaddy> ) Shaddy> </snip> Shaddy> Would it be happier if I had these in a seperate Shaddy> "custom-file"? Is it strictly wrong for XEmacs and Emacs Shaddy> to share Customizations? I understand that the packages See above. Shaddy> will dictate this, and seeing as most packages share Shaddy> configuration items across Emacsen, if it is do-able, I Shaddy> want to do it. Only XEmacs has separately distributed packages. Hope this helps, Adrian Shaddy> Thanks in advance, Shaddy> Shaddy -- Adrian Aichner mailto:adrian＠xemacs.org http://www.xemacs.org/