Re: Emacs FAQ for Emacs 22.1

[Richard M. Stallman]

    We currently _do_ document both ways more or less equally in the Emacs
    manual.  The Custom way in `(emacs)Easy Customization' and the .emacs
    way in `(emacs)Init File'.  I do not see any reason to change that.

We have no plans to deprecate the writing of setq calls, or to stop
teaching people to customize Emacs that way.  However, that's a slightly
different question from the one at hand.

The question at hand is, when giving beginners advice about how to
customize Emacs to do a specific thing, which method or methods should
we tell them to use?  I think it is good to customize for this.