Auto-writing to .emacs

[William F. Hammond]

Cross-posted to gnu.emacs.bug with followup there since this is not
really about gnus.

Kai.Grossjohann@CS.Uni-Dortmund.DE (Kai Großjohann) writes:

> > narrow-to-region ??  What if two emacsen are running?
> > I hope not.
> 
> Try it.  When you invoke narrow-to-region, Emacs tells you it's a
> disabled command and whether you want to enable it for this session
> or for future sessions.

The ownership principle is important.  If user-init-file (pathname of
".emacs" in $HOME) is for user edits, then only user edits should be
there.  This excludes (1) the result of user actions under "customize"
and (2) state information.  It would be much better to provide
(default names) ".emacsc" for (1) and ".emacss" for (2).  (In saying
the latter I am assuming (without looking) that state information is
tied to the name of a file rather than to a process id.)

Furthermore, I would suggest that conflicts between .emacs and .emacsc
should go by default in favor of .emacsc (since .emacs needs to be
loaded first), with, of course, the provision of a post-customize hook
for cleaning up afterwards.  This is important because, for example,
a user might not be cognizant of variable settings in .emacsc.  Even
if the user is so cognizant, the user, who is not "allowed" under the
same ownership principle to edit .emacsc, might find it much easier
to fix a problem by writing elisp that by toying with menus.

                                    -- Bill