Re: table.el

[Richard Stallman]

               ;; Hooks can also contain a non-list.
               (unless (consp ,wrapper-var)
                 (setq ,wrapper-var (list ,wrapper-var)))

This feature exists for hooks only for historical compatibility.  We
discourage its use.  There is no reason to support it for a new
feature such as wrappers.

    I'd still like to find a way to reuse `run-hooks' rather than
    manually handle the non-list-to-list conversion and the local/global
    thingy,

The local/global handling is just a few lines of code.  Making a
subroutine for that would cost more than it is worth.  It would make
the code slower, and bigger, and more work to understand because not
self-contained.

                        (nth 1 (backtrace-frame
                                (if (eq (nth 1 (eval-when-compile 
(backtrace-frame 1))) 'progn) 7 1)))

Using backtrace-frame is not robust.  There seem to be three
possibilities here:

1. Define some new mechanism just for this purpose, and make it reliable.

2. Pass a constructed lambda expression as Stefan(?) suggested.

3. Establish a convention that the user should write the outside
function name, quoted, as the second element of WRAPPER-FORM.

It is be useful to be able to test the function name, so I think 3 is
best.

    As I said WRAPPER-VAR is a misnomer since hooks just aren't variables.
    They are represented as symbols (just like coding-systems, faces and
    several other kinds of objects) and they happen to use the `symbol-value'
    and the `default-value' of a symbol for their internals which makes
    them look similar to variables, but they are not variables.

That is a strange thing to say.  Of course hooks are variables.
They are variables used for a specific purpose.