Subject: Re: bug#4510: 23.1; Separate help-argument-face from downcasing

From: Juanma Barranquero <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 22 Sep 2009 00:17:12 +0200

On Mon, Sep 21, 2009 at 23:35, Drew Adams <[email-masked]> wrote:

> That should not be the only alternative for users.  Users should not
> be expected to redefine basic functions in order to customize such
> appearances.  And in any case, it makes no sense for the face and
> the letter case to be hard-code-coupled.

I agree.

When help argument highlighting was introduced, there was some
resistance to adding more configuration options (surely because we
were in the long road to Emacs 22 and everybody was tired and wanting
to speed things up), and the argument was put forward (by Richard,
IIRC) that variables were just one option for the user to customize
his Emacs environment, redefining functions being another.

I was unconvinced then and I'm still unconvinced now. Redefining a
standard Emacs function (or advising around it) in your .emacs is not
a good idea; any change in the source of the original function will
catch you off guard.

    Juanma