RE: can't set both mode-line color and default frame font?

[Davis Herring]

>> I meant that if Lisp does choose -to- customize, that should
>> take precedence because it is a choice (there's your reason).
>
> And setting a face preference via an X resource is _not_ choosing?
>
> I still don't see an argument (a reason) that applies only to
> `custom-file'
> and not to X resources. Flip it around, and it makes just as much sense
> (little).

I'm having wretched luck writing clearly here.  It is true, of course,
that the user may choose to put something in an X resource.  (The session
manager may also do so, which is what started this.)  But no mechanism I
know of for setting X resources -itself- may make such choices; that is,
it must be all-or-nothing, and cannot be adaptive, deferent, or flexible. 
Personifying those mechanisms, they are dumb: they can do what they are
told, but cannot make decisions or analyze situations.  Lisp is, of
course, not dumb, although making it at all smart may be beyond the skills
of an Emacs novice.

If we say that X resources take priority, knowing that they are asserted
by simpletons (the files holding the settings, not the users!), we lose
the ability to use X resources and yet be smart about it.  If we say that
Lisp takes priority, then we have not restricted ourselves: the resources
may be used, or -- if the smart Lisp decides -- they may be
ignored/overridden.  That is my argument: that one precedence order
provides a less powerful way of specifying preferences than the other.  A
user who chooses to set X resources and wants them used is of course also
capable of not setting overriding preferences in Lisp.

Davis

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