Re: "Magic" Variables?

[Maciej Stachowiak <mstachow@mit.edu>]

[suggestion about set-param!]

> 1) It's yet another bunch of syntax.
> 2) You know people will try set!, perhaps by accident.  Sometimes it
>    will work, and other times it will have annoying consequences.
>    (This problem could go away if the variables lived in a separate
>    module from the one the config files are evaluated in.  Too hairy
>    for you yet?)
> 3) People writing customization modules for scwm might not use it all
>    the time, so you'll still have a mixture of set!'ed variables and
>    other magic, re-introducing the original consistency and defeating

Yes, these are all moderate drawbacks. I am almost tempted to
implement something like Common Lisp's symbol-macrolet special form
and eval the config file inside a big symbol-macrolet. But this would
probably have many annoying drawbacks as well (although
symbol-macrolet can be a cute thing to use with object systems).

 - MAciej Stachowiak