From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.io!.POSTED.blaine.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Richard Stallman Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.bugs Subject: bug#21695: 25.0.50; Change most occurrences of `setq' in Emacs manual to `customize-set-variable'? Really? Date: Wed, 01 Sep 2021 23:42:04 -0400 Message-ID: References: <97d3ff2c-9e72-4004-88a9-08130ac99a74@default> Reply-To: rms@gnu.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset=Utf-8 Injection-Info: ciao.gmane.io; posting-host="blaine.gmane.org:116.202.254.214"; logging-data="10716"; mail-complaints-to="usenet@ciao.gmane.io" Cc: 21695@debbugs.gnu.org To: Howard Melman Original-X-From: bug-gnu-emacs-bounces+geb-bug-gnu-emacs=m.gmane-mx.org@gnu.org Thu Sep 02 05:43:10 2021 Return-path: Envelope-to: geb-bug-gnu-emacs@m.gmane-mx.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([209.51.188.17]) by ciao.gmane.io with esmtps (TLS1.2:ECDHE_RSA_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:256) (Exim 4.92) (envelope-from ) id 1mLdd7-0002Za-22 for geb-bug-gnu-emacs@m.gmane-mx.org; Thu, 02 Sep 2021 05:43:09 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:46442 helo=lists1p.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1mLdd5-00059n-OL for geb-bug-gnu-emacs@m.gmane-mx.org; Wed, 01 Sep 2021 23:43:07 -0400 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:470:142:3::10]:53672) by lists.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS1.2:ECDHE_RSA_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:256) (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1mLdcz-00058c-SE for bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Wed, 01 Sep 2021 23:43:01 -0400 Original-Received: from debbugs.gnu.org ([209.51.188.43]:55997) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS1.2:ECDHE_RSA_AES_128_GCM_SHA256:128) (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1mLdcz-0007Uc-Kk for bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Wed, 01 Sep 2021 23:43:01 -0400 Original-Received: from Debian-debbugs by debbugs.gnu.org with local (Exim 4.84_2) (envelope-from ) id 1mLdcz-0003t9-Id for bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org; Wed, 01 Sep 2021 23:43:01 -0400 X-Loop: help-debbugs@gnu.org Resent-From: Richard Stallman Original-Sender: "Debbugs-submit" Resent-CC: bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org Resent-Date: Thu, 02 Sep 2021 03:43:01 +0000 Resent-Message-ID: Resent-Sender: help-debbugs@gnu.org X-GNU-PR-Message: followup 21695 X-GNU-PR-Package: emacs Original-Received: via spool by 21695-submit@debbugs.gnu.org id=B21695.163055413514893 (code B ref 21695); Thu, 02 Sep 2021 03:43:01 +0000 Original-Received: (at 21695) by debbugs.gnu.org; 2 Sep 2021 03:42:15 +0000 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1]:39310 helo=debbugs.gnu.org) by debbugs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.84_2) (envelope-from ) id 1mLdcF-0003s9-Fm for submit@debbugs.gnu.org; Wed, 01 Sep 2021 23:42:15 -0400 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([209.51.188.92]:37080) by debbugs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.84_2) (envelope-from ) id 1mLdcD-0003rw-Ik for 21695@debbugs.gnu.org; Wed, 01 Sep 2021 23:42:13 -0400 Original-Received: from fencepost.gnu.org ([2001:470:142:3::e]:46716) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1mLdc8-0006UO-BV; Wed, 01 Sep 2021 23:42:08 -0400 Original-Received: from rms by fencepost.gnu.org with local (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1mLdc4-0004JR-W5; Wed, 01 Sep 2021 23:42:05 -0400 In-Reply-To: (message from Howard Melman on Tue, 31 Aug 2021 23:07:07 -0400) X-BeenThere: debbugs-submit@debbugs.gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.18 Precedence: list X-BeenThere: bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org List-Id: "Bug reports for GNU Emacs, the Swiss army knife of text editors" List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: bug-gnu-emacs-bounces+geb-bug-gnu-emacs=m.gmane-mx.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: "bug-gnu-emacs" Xref: news.gmane.io gmane.emacs.bugs:213222 Archived-At: [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider ]]] [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]] [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]] > Searching emacs 27.2 elisp source I find about 400 hits for :set. That is more than I expected. However, there around 8000 defcustoms in master as of May 11, and only 462 instances of :set. Telling people to use customize-set-variable for all 8000 of them feels like the tail wagging the dog. I have a feeling that most of those 462 with :set actually require that people use customize-set-variable to set them in the init file. I suspect that, for most of them, :set is meant to handle the case where you change the setting once the feature is already in use. I think that if we eliminate these, we will get a much smaller number of exceptions, and we could find a nicer way to handle them. But even with 462 exceptions, it could be easy enough to warn about setting one of those in .emacs with setq. -- Dr Richard Stallman (https://stallman.org) Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org) Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org) Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)