Host specific customization functions

hi all, a package that i am using defines an a-list of various font properties f.e. 'family', 'weight', 'height' etc. etc. i want to set values to these properties progammatically, f.e. on linux + my-home-machine i would want to set 'family' to say "Iosevka Mono", on my laptop i would use a high-dpi friendly font etc. i wrote a trivial function like so: (defun util:get-host-default-font-family () "return host specific font-family" (interactive) (cond ((utils:host-name-is "host-01") Iosevka Mono") ((utils:host-name-is "host-02") "Go Mono Regular") ((t "Consolas")))) the "utils:host-name-is <name-of-host>" returns 'true' when current hostname matches the provided argument, 'false' otherwise. the above function does the right thing when called interactively on different hosts. however, when i use it like so (:default-family (util:get-host-default-font-family)) i get a Wrong type argument: stringp, (util:get-host-default-font-family) how do i fix it ? -- thanks !

Wondering if `(:default-family ,(util:get-host-default-font-family))` would work? Note the `,` before the function call of `util:get-host-default-font-family`. I also don't think your function need be `(interactive)`.

just tried that, unfortunately that invocation does not work. i get this Wrong type argument: stringp, (, (util:get-host-default-font-family))

`(:default-family (util:get-host-default-font-family)` isn't enough context to say what's going wrong. You need to show the rest of the expression surrounding that.

your code above is missing a double quote around 'Iosevka Mono'

ah, yes it is. but that is unfortunately not the issue. fixing that does not really change anything…

sorry, for the slight delay in posting this, but i finally figured the problem out. just to give out some context, i am using [fontaine](https://protesilaos.com/emacs/fontaine) for font customizations. now, fontaine defines a 'fontaine-presets' variable which is just an alist of various font properties f.e. 'default-weight', 'default-height' etc. etc. for each font. it is defined like so (setq fontaine-presets '((tiny :default-height 70) (presentation :default-height 120) ... (t :default-family "Iosevka" :default-weight regular ...)))) given the above snippet, the problem is pretty obvious :o) [shoutout to u/eleven_cupfuls, for insisting on seeing wider context to the error message]. the trivial solution that i used is to split the alist config into host-agnostic, and host-specific parts (respectively) as follows ;; ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- ;; these are the default font heights (setq fontaine-presets '((tiny :default-height 70) (small :default-height 80) (regular :default-height 90) (large :default-height 110) (presentation :default-height 120))) ;; ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- ;; setup host specific *default* fontaine-presets (add-to-list 'fontaine-presets (cond ;; host-1 ((utils/host-name-is "host-1") '(t :default-family "PragmataPro Mono" :default-weight regular :default-height 90)) ;; host-2 ((utils/host-name-is "host-2") '(t :default-family "Go Mono Regular" :default-weight regular :default-height 90)) ;; everything else ((t '(t :default-family "PragmataPro Mono" :default-weight regular :default-height 90))))) this does the trick for me. i am *sure* there are far better ways to organize this, and would love it hear your suggestions etc. thank you u/takeonrules, u/jaw0 for your suggestions. best regards !

I use chezmoi dotfiles manager to sync settings across different mashines. It support templatings, so you can specify different settings in one place. I also have different fonts on different mashines and one change will change font in any application I have, including GTK settings, etc

ah i see. thank you kindly for the suggestion. for now, i am using the snippet i posted earlier to do host specific configuration. but ofcourse in a wider context chezmoi does seem to be quite promising.