Subject: Re: bug#38696: "If you edit it by hand, you could mess it up"

From: Richard Stallman <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 22 Dec 2019 21:58:08 -0500

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  > (custom-set-faces
  >  ;; custom-set-faces was added by Custom.
  >  ;; If you edit it by hand, you could mess it up, so be careful.
  >  ;; Your init file should contain only one such instance.
  >  ;; If there is more than one, they won't work right.
  >  '(default ((t (:family "DejaVu Sans Mono" :foundry "PfEd" :slant normal :weight normal :height 218 :width normal)))))

  > There is no way offered to "decompile" this into something that all
  > those Emacs manuals talk about when introducing how to edit your .emacs
  > file.

It isn't Lisp code.  It is just data, and the bulk of it is a plist
that is pretty obvious to edit.

It would be useful to explain the three outer levels of list structure.
A couple of lines of comment can explain that.
-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://gnu.org, https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)