Re: Customize enforcing data relationships?

[Stefan Monnier <address@hidden>]

> More thoughts are that, of course, it would be the package developer's
> responsibility to define the relationships.  He could define through
> some custom function, say, "defcustomrel", that B must be set if A is
> set.  Then customize could see the user set A and immediately jump the
> user to B and the setting of A isn't complete until the user has set B,
> thus enforcing the dependency.  Even better would be displaying them
> together as well, with the dependency mapped out visually.

The problem is that dependency is typically of the form

  (defcustom a foo)
  (defcustom b (bar a))

and people think "Aha! B depends on A", but then some user comes along
and changes her setting for B from (bar a) to (baz c) and maybe she
even changes A's setting to (foz b) and we now have a completely
different dependency.

So I don't think the dependency should be specified as part of the
`defcustom' but as part of the value instead.


        Stefan