Re: Why is it not possible to use "nil" any more in init files ?

[Alexandre Oberlin]

On Wed, 26 Nov 2014 15:15:12 +0100, Phillip Lord  
<phillip.lord@newcastle.ac.uk> wrote:

> This is somewhere in between. I certainly used to do
> (add-hook 'blah 'wanted-mode)
> which generally works.
> Then I found out about
> (add-hook 'blah 'turn-on-wanted-mode)
> which works better. But many people did the former. Now it works
> correctly as well.
Looks like there is a huge difference with the new minor mode setting  
issue: the above adds clarity and does not break any backward  
compatibility, so it is a good move, just like x-get-selection should be  
be preferred to x-selection in new code, but x-selection still works.   
This approach of adding more specific and unambiguous function names  
without breaking anything could perfectly have been used for the mode  
setting issue.  Taking enriched-mode (which I use all the time) as an  
example, one could have added:
(set-enriched-mode) and (unset-enriched-mode)
while leaving the intrinsically ambiguous (enriched-mode) toggling as well  
in evaluation as interactively.

> I don't understand why you can't seem to see that
> it's a compromise that advantages many.
This reminds me of parents who don’t understand why they should be strict  
with their kid, when laxity brings contentment to the kid and peace to  
themselves... for some time ;-)


Cheers,

Alexandre