Subject: Re: bug#52293: 29.0.50; [PATCH v3] Prevent further cases of duplicated separators in context menus

From: Jim Porter <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2021 10:13:28 -0800

On 12/13/2021 4:23 AM, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
>> Cc: [email-masked], [email-masked]
>> From: Jim Porter <[email-masked]>
>> Date: Sun, 12 Dec 2021 13:59:16 -0800
>>
>> On 12/12/2021 12:43 PM, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
>>>> Cc: [email-masked], [email-masked]
>>>> From: Jim Porter <[email-masked]>
>>>> Date: Sun, 12 Dec 2021 12:27:34 -0800
>>>>
>>>> On 12/11/2021 11:02 PM, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
>>>>> Are you saying that we will be recommending a convention for separator
>>>>> names only for menus popped up in context-menu-mode?  Does it make
>>>>> sense to have such a specialized convention?  Isn't it possible to
>>>>> show context menus outside of the context-menu-mode?
>>>>
>>>> No, I think this convention should be recommended for separators used
>>>> anywhere in Emacs going forward.
>>>
>>> Ok, so then the effect of this change is wide, as I envisioned, and
>>> compatibility considerations still apply.
>>
>> I'm also ok with applying this naming convention *only* to context menus
>> and not treating this as a general guideline; that would still make it
>> easier to remember the names of each context menu separator without
>> having to double-check the source code.
> 
> I don't think this would make sense, and I said that above.

I don't really have a preference about what we recommend in the 
documentation. We don't need to recommend anything at all. Above, I was 
just referring to changing the separator names within context-menu-mode 
functions to use a single style (`foo-separator'), not necessarily 
documenting/recommending it.

Even the code change I only have a very slight preference for. I was 
just reading through the context-menu code to understand it, saw that 
some separators were named `foo-separator' and others named 
`separator-foo', and thought that was a bit odd. The only "problem" (and 
it's barely a problem) is that programmers writing code referring to 
these separators later (e.g. with `define-key-after') might get the 
names mixed up if they're not paying attention. Since I came across it, 
I thought I'd submit a patch in case the maintainers wanted it.

However, if it's controversial (or just too late in the release cycle to 
make a small compatibility break), I don't have a problem with closing 
bug#52286 as wontfix. It's such a minor issue that I really don't see 
any major downside to wontfixing the bug if there's any hesitation about it.