Re: Eliminating "changed in Emacs outside of Customize"

["Lennart Borgman" <lennart.borgman.073@student.lu.se>]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Drew Adams" <drew.adams@oracle.com>

> I still have the specific question of _what the problem is_ with the
> scenario that you and Stefan (and I) described: a setq (in .emacs or a
> library) executed after custom-set-variables. Yes, a setq changes the
> current value so that it is no longer the `saved-value' - but so what?

The novice user changes a value in customize, saves and restarts Emacs. Then
he find that the value is still the same. His conclusion is that there is
something wrong with Emacs. He does not dare to use it any more.

>     The original question was that: "What would be wrong
>     with treating, in the Customize UI, outside changes the same as
>     inside changes?"

I think the distinction is good. It was however very confusing the first
time I saw it. When I now see the distinction between user variables (should
only be changed by the user) and others it is much more clear. Should not
this distinction should be pointed out very clearly in Info under Easy
Customization?

I would prefer a marriage between set-variable and customize however.

One problem I see (see above) is the order of execution at startup of Emacs.
This was to some extent discussed when we wrote about custom-file. I still
believe it would be good to have custom-file executed after .emacs by
default. In that case customize could warn for "rouge" custom variable
states.