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

From: Richard Stallman <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 04 Sep 2021 23:43:05 -0400

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  > > Telling people to use customize-set-variable for all 8000 of them
  > > feels like the tail wagging the dog.

  > Yes.  But I don't see why the numbers matter here.  An option which
  > cannot be usefully change via setq mentions that in its doc string (or
  > at least it should; if it doesn't, that's a documentation bug), so all
  > we need to say in the manual is that such options exist, and they
  > announce the need to use customize-set-variable in their doc string by
  > such-and-such text.  Then the users will have enough information to
  > figure out which variable needs what method.

I agree, that is adequate.  So I think we agree on this issue.

However, it may be easy to warn if an init file sets one of these
variables with setq.  If that's easy, I think it would be good to do.
It would help users detect and correct these mistakes.

Maybe we could arrange to make it work right to set even those
variables with setq in init files.

Here's a way: after the init files finish, look at the value of the
variable, and if it does not equal the default, and this value was not
properly installed with the :set method, invoke that variable's :set
method.

WDYT?

-- 
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)