[comp.emacs.xemacs] Fix to customization for 'Manual-switches' in 'man.el'

[John Paul Wallington]

On 28 Apr 2008, at 18:41, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:

> John Paul Wallington writes:
>
>> On 27 Apr 2008, at 23:59, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:
>>
>>> D'oh.  It *is* redundant, isn't it.  Unless somebody comes up with a
>>> good reason not to, I'm just going to get rid of the const nil and
>>> parent choice widget, too.
>>
>> FWIW, although it's strictly redundant I think offering the choice
>> makes for a better user experience and would leave Alan's patch as- 
>> is.
>
> I tend to disagree because I think of this as an interface to a (Lisp)
> list, and because it makes customizing this variable slower than it
> need be.  Can you say why having the "none" option works for you?

I can't really put my finger on why. It seems more explicit to choose  
between a labelled none/nil/empty list option versus the repeat  
widget. But having played more with Customize I don't think it matters  
much.

> My point is that consistency is presumably a good thing, and if having
> a choice of "none" is good for this list-that-might-be-empty, wouldn't
> it be a better idea to have that built-in to the `repeat' widget?

If we had a clean slate then I think that would be a better idea.  
However, there's probably tonnes of existing code with choices much  
like the `Manual-switches' variable or variations thereof such that  
unconditionally building an explicit nil/empty list choice into the  
`repeat' widget would result in an ugly redundant interface whilst  
working out when to conditionally display it could be too much effort.