Re: doc elisp intro cross reference fixes

[David Kastrup]

Richard Stallman <address@hidden> writes:

>     I think calling such cases "broken" is alarmist.
>     There might be cases where some defcustoms get placed in groups where
>     they were not meant to go, but I can't think of any way this can break
>     any code.
> 
> It would "break the code" in the sense that the unchanged defcustoms
> would no longer do what they are intended to do.
> 
> Giving users a way to avoid repeated :group specifications could be
> convenient, but it looks like this way of doing it is unreliable.
> So let's consider another way: a special expression
> 
>   (defcustom-group FOO)
> 
> which would mean, "use group FOO by default for the rest of this file, or
> until another defcustom-group."  This way, just changing the defgroups
> would not alter the default for :group in any defcustom.
> 
> This would do basically the same job of defaulting for convenience, but in
> a more reliable way.
> 
> Do you see any drawback in this change?

Well, we also have defaults for the type ('sexp) and a few other
things, so it might make sense to have something like a

(defcustom-defaults :group FOO :type boolean :match ...)

or so as a more general mechanism.  The question is just which scope
it should have.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum