[bongo-devel] Re: 'Random' function failing to be random

[Daniel Jensen]

Daniel Brockman <address@hidden> writes:

> It occurs to me that probably there is a reason why Emacs
> does not seed its random number generator, and that maybe
> we should just not do it.

I wrote what seems to be the reason, it's mentioned in the manual. It
should not conflict with what Bongo does.

It's not like Bongo would be the first Emacs program to do this. Take
a look at the games in Emacs, a number of them use (random t) in
different ways. There are other programs too that are not games but
use random numbers for some reason.

> Perhaps it is conventional that users who want random
> behavior should put `(random t)' in their init files.

That is not acceptable, in my opinion. Why do you think it's
conventional?

> Should we ask emacs-devel for advice?  (The Emacs manual
> does not make it clear what the accepted behavior is.)

If you're still uncertain, sure, go ahead.