Subject: bug#4562: 23.1; Customize State button problems

From: Stefan Monnier <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 28 Sep 2009 01:41:05 -0400

> The State text says "CHANGED outside Customize; operating on it here
> may be unreliable.", which is untrue. This is immediately after using
> `emacs -Q'.

You misunderstand: "CHANGED outside Customize" doesn't mean "You changed
it", but instead it means "some Lisp code somewhere changed it without
telling Customize".  That Lisp code could be in your .emacs, but
not necesarily.  I hope this makes the rest of the behavior a bit more
understable (tho probably not completely clear since it seems some part
are indeed odd).

So what you have here is simply a bug where Emacs's startup code
modifies default-frame-alist without telling Customize about it.
IIUC it's not easy to fix it, because some of those changes are things
which shoujldn't be saved in the Custom version of default-frame-alist
(they are dynamically set at startup depending on your window-system
and/or command-line args).  I guess basically what it means is that
default-frame-alist shouldn't be a defcustom becaude we don't know how
to let Custom handle it correctly.

        Stefan