Re: address@hidden: Re: erase customization does not work]

[David Kastrup]

"Richard M. Stallman" <address@hidden> writes:

>       The problem is that I believe that this is a dangerous button,
>     that could make people loose a lot of customizations carefully
>     built up over the years, by inadvertently clicking mouse-1 on it
>     (just to give focus to the frame).
>
> If you delete customizations this way, they will remain in the
> backup file of .emacs.  So it isn't quite so dangerous as you make
> it sound.

The first impulse of an average user when confronted with a
catastrophe is to try salvaging it.  In a panic, this will likely
result in an attempt of putting together the old .emacs from memory or
other sources.  In this case, the backup file will be gone with the
next save.

I have witnessed enough scenarios where I had to tell people "if you
had just called me right after the damage instead of trying to fix it,
it would have been easy to restore".

So in particular in this case, I'd not consider the existence of the
backup file (and some people turn of backup files, anyway) enough for
dismissing the case as harmless.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum