Re: bad UI defaults

[Richard Stallman]

    > Of course, we could use something general such as :type 'sexp, but
    > customizing the variable that way would require full knowledge of the
    > data structure at the Lisp level.

    I'd have thought that was necessary if you were going to customize it
    to such an extent.

My idea is to write a special kind of type that represents mode-line
elements, which would enable users to do customization without having
to know the Lisp format of the data.

    I thought more in terms of moving around or deleting the standard set
    of elements, but I haven't thought about how that might work well.

The ability to shuffle elements would be a nice feature for this type
to have.  Most types that define lists of elements have operations
to insert, change, and delete, but not to swap.  However, there is no
reason it must be that way.  This type could offer the opportunity
of swapping two consecutive elements.