Subject: bug#29422: [SUSPECTED SPAM] Re: bug#29422: 27.0.50; Symbol enable-multibyte-characters may not be buffer-local

From: Stefan Monnier <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 26 Nov 2017 23:42:20 -0500

>> My patch did not touch `setq`.  It just made `make-local-variable` and
>> `make-buffer-local-variable` signal the same error as `setq`.
> Which IMO is confusing because the doc string of
> enable-multibyte-characters says
>   Automatically becomes permanently buffer-local when set.

Yes, it's a weird critter.  Some versions ago, you could setq-default on
it, whereas you couldn't setq on it.
It'd arguably be cleaner if it were a function rather than a variable.

> Actually, Emacs 21 said something more reasonable:
>
>   Variable enable-multibyte-characters is read-only
>
> which was different from the error signaled when trying to change the
> value of, say, t.  Only Emacs 22.1 tossed the difference and started
> to signal the same error for both.

Oh, right, Gerd only added defvaralias in Emacs-22 (which is why/when
it get unified into the `constant` bit field, IIRC).

        Stefan