RE: Eliminating "changed in Emacs outside of Customize"

["Drew Adams" <drew.adams@oracle.com>]

    > Of course the above problem will only happen if the (setq-default
    > fill-column 42) happens to be executed after Helen's
    > custom-set-variables (e.g. in a mode-hook or in one of the many
    > poorly written major modes that happily mess up global variables).

    Wrong.  Customize does not touch variables that have been set outside
    of it.  Whether the set-default is executed before or after customize
    initializes its variables does not matter.  The only difference is
    that if it is customized before, custom-set-variables will call the
    :set function (after the fact), something which does not happen
    otherwise.

Huh? What's the deal - do I have a different Emacs from everyone else? I'm
using vanilla Emacs from CVS of last July, so I probably do, but I wouldn't
expect this to be different. Did you actually prove the pudding by ta/esting
it?

I see exactly the behavior described by Per, Stefan, and myself - and I see
no pb with it (unlike Stefan and Per).

Following Stefan's directions, an initially empty .emacs ends up being this:

 (setq-default fill-column 42)
 (custom-set-variables
  '(fill-column 75))
 (custom-set-faces)

Upon restarting, fill-column is 75 and flagged "set and saved" in Customize.

If, as Stefan suggested, I place the (setq-default fill-column 42) after the
custom-set* stuff:

 (custom-set-variables
  '(fill-column 75))
 (custom-set-faces)
 (setq-default fill-column 42)

Then, upon restarting, fill-column is 42 and flagged "changed outside
Customize". So, I don't see why you say "Wrong...before or after...does not
matter."

And, if we erased the distinction between "set" and "changed outside", the
only difference (that I can see) would be that, in this last scenario,
fill-column is 42 and flagged "set".

 - Drew