"Drew Adams" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > Finally, I'm ignorant: Just why is `face' not treated similarly to > `function' - why isn't `face' a datatype? If the answer expresses a > general rule, then perhaps that rule should also be included in the > doc, to clarify things.
probably the general rule is not to introduce too many fundamental types, as doing so exponentiates complexity, unless absolutely necessary. for faces, it doesn't appear to be necessary. i got on a kick of documenting internals (to exercise a pet doc extraction system i wrote) for a personal project and am now wondering how it was that enthusiasm triumphed over experience Yet Again... so, while i agree that the documentation could make more distinction between fundamental and composed (or "defined-by-conventional-use") types, i figure that doing so might be a bad idea because it would constrain the implementation. since `facep' works like `functionp' (fsvo "like"), that should be what programmers rely on. if in the future faces become fundamental, that transition will be easier to handle if prior internals were left unexposed (ignorance is bliss). thi _______________________________________________ Emacs-devel mailing list [email protected] http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/emacs-devel
