Re: Visual cleanup for customize buffers

[Luc Teirlinck]

Bill Wohler wrote:

   You're kidding me. I'm with Kim. Even if this is documented, it is bad
   UI.

The whole buffer buttons are a bad UI, with _or_ without the hidden
button feature or misfeature.

Even if you consider it a misfeature, the fact that the whole buffer
buttons do not operate on hidden items is _not_ a regression.  The
whole buffer buttons have behaved like that ever since Custom was
first introduced into Emacs, without any huge flurry of complaints
until yesterday, when I pointed this behavior out.

Getting rid of the feature would introduce at least two serious bugs,
probably more.  I believe that the feature was mainly introduced
because Per believed that without it fixing those various bugs would be
too complex.  Those bugs _would_ be regressions.  Ones other than the
two I know about from reading the code will not be discovered before
the release, because no one really uses these whole buffer buttons.

Given this I believe that it would be a _really_ bad idea to mess
with this stuff now, supposedly "shortly" before the release.

After the release, the whole buffer buttons should either be discarded
altogether in multiple option buffer buttons or fixed so that they
only operate on "selected" items were the difference between
"selected" and "hidden" is that nothing is selected by default.  Use
of Custom as a browser prevents hiding all options by default, which
_would_ make the whole buffer buttons usable as is.  (Faces and groups
are already hidden by default.)

Note that even if the whole buffer buttons _would_ operate on hidden
items, they would still not operate on the entire buffer: they do not
operate on items that are changed outside Custom or are otherwise
rogue (and trying to change that would lead to some _really_ serious
bugs).

Sincerely,

Luc.