Re: Face color changes

[Richard Stallman]

     > Yes, but I think it is a drastic thing to do--to discard all the other
     > conditional alternatives that the user doesn't even know about.  The
     > user probably meant the customization to replace the behavior he saw.

    It's drastic, but it's basically the same thing that happens for
    variables.

It is partly similar and partly different.  Variables don't have specs
with conditions, they just have initial value forms.  The fact that specs
represent the alternatives and their conditions in a declarative way
makes it natural not to discard them.

    Since faces have conditional specs, should variables have specs (vs.
    just lisp object values) as well?

This technique is useful for faces because (1) there is a limited set
of conditions that you might want to test and (2) users can plausibly
run in different backgrounds and terminals even on the same system.

It is clear we cannot usefully apply the specs technique to variables
generally.  Perhaps there are certain variables for which the technique
is applicable.