Hrvoje Niksic <hniksic(a)srce.hr&gt; writes in xemacs-beta(a)xemacs.org: O.K. I'm experimenting with all kinds of things built on top of custom. The specific operation that prompted this question was implementing a get standard value function in a menu to see whether the value had been changed. Example two would be initialization code that changes some XEmacs defaults, but *not* if the user has customized it (an example of brain damage of this sort that stomps all over the user is jde). There's no good reason to keep it hidden. There's a lot of magic in `defface' I want a formal interface to as well. It'd be easier/better to call well-defined Custom functions to do this rather than have to poke around inside the implementation. Abstraction is good, abstraction to the point of castration is bad.