RE: toolbar conventions

[Drew Adams]

       Does anyone have any ideas on the issue of how to use the term
       "option"?  That issue is more important--it is not just an issue of
       punctuation, it is inconsistent use of a word.  Would someone like to
       study the situation and find out which uses occur where?

    The name "user option" used to pretty consistently refer to variables,
    although occasionally some remarks about them may have applied to
    faces too, without this being explicitly mentioned.

    It appears that this started to change somewhere around the beginning
    of this year, with changes like:

    2005-01-30  Richard M. Stallman  <address@hidden>

            * custom.texi (Easy Customization): Defn of "User Option"
            now includes faces.  Don't say just "option" when talking
            about variables.  Do say just "options" to mean "anything
            customizable".  (Specific Customization): Describe
            `customize-variable', not `customize-option'.

    This appears to be a rather radical change in terminology, especially
    when supposedly preparing for a release.  It would require going very
    carefully through code and manuals, if we wanted to be consistent.  I
    believe that the majority of places in the Emacs code and docs still
    use the word "user option" to mean "user variable".

    The change would require some getting used to it for existing users,
    used to the old terminology.  Even if we consistently change all code
    and manuals, use of the old terminology is likely to find its way back
    in, through commits from people unaware of the change.  I myself was
    unaware of it, until today.  I read through custom.texi, but somehow I
    just thought that it used "option" in a loose way, for convenience.

Please note that there was a fairly thorough discussion of exactly this
topic on the emacs-pretest list between 2005-01-22 and 2005-01-27 (hence the
log comment by RMS on 1-30).

Please review those messages before continuing this thread. Better that we
should pick up from where we left off discussing the issues involved, than
that we repeat ourselves. New input on previously discussed stuff is
welcome, of course.