Subject: bug#21695: 25.0.50; Change most occurrences of `setq' in Emacs manual to `customize-set-variable'? Really?

From: martin rudalics <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 18 Sep 2021 09:34:34 +0200

> I am now not sure what you had in mind.
 > However, we seem to have reached conflicting conclusions.
 > You say that
 >
 >   > Then it seems to say that setting one of these variable with setq (in
 >   > an init file?) is almost surely a bug.
 >
 > but everything else in this discussion seems to support the opposite
 > conclusion: setting one of these variables with setq in an init file,
 > in the usual simple case (you haven't loaded the definition yet), is
 > perfectly ok.

Note that Gregory's patch addresses only a small subset of customizable
variables - those whose values should be assigned with a :set form.
Typical examples are timer based options like 'blink-cursor-delay' where
setting the variable requires to start or restart a timer or options
where you want to update things on all live frames or windows as with
'frame-background-mode'.  With most of these options a simple 'setq'
would have none or at least not the desired visible effect.

martin