Re: doc elisp intro cross reference fixes

[Stefan Monnier]

> I did misunderstand the intent.  Nevertheless, there are problems.
> First of all, there is the possibility of existing code being broken.

I think calling such cases "broken" is alarmist.
There might be cases where some defcustoms get placed in groups where
they were not meant to go, but I can't think of any way this can break
any code.

> Secondly, before your change, adding a defgroup to a file was
> harmless, but now one has to be extremely careful with that.

For someone who used the feature, it's pretty obvious.
So the use of "extremely" again sounds very alarmist.

> personally would be very reluctant to use your feature, just in case
> somebody sooner or later added another defgroup.   Currently your
> feature is not widely known and people do not know that adding
> defgroups to files has become dangerous.

People don't walk around adding defgroups left and right.

> If it is OK for an option not to have a group, then there should be
> a way for the author to specify that.  For `:group nil' to be
> equivalent with specifying no group, one should make sure that the
> option was automatically removed from the `nil' group if it was added
> to a "real" group elsewhere.

What I suggested is to make something like `:group nil' not place
the defcustom in any group (obviously not even in the `nil' group).

> ** defcustom and other custom declarations now use a default group
> (the last group defined in the same file) when no :group was given.

> Is ambiguous: Is really meant "the last group" or "the last prior
> group".

If the ambiguity worries you, feel free to fix it.  If you think hard enough
about it, you'll realize that it's basically impossible to make it mean "the
very last group in the file" because a file is processed sequentially when
read, so it means "the last prior group".


        Stefan