Re: doc elisp intro cross reference fixes

[Kevin Rodgers]

Stefan Monnier wrote:

> >   After (defcustom foobar 1 "hello"), set-variable is quite happy to
> >   let me set the variable `foobar'.
>
> > On second thought, I believe that is a bug.
>
> It's clearly not a bug.  A misfeature maybe, but not a bug since code
> was written explicitly for it.


The code you're referring to is Fuser_variable_p, right?


> Anyway my point is that the difference between defcustom with and without
> a * is in practice absent and in theory much too subtle and debatable to
> justify its existence (after all, who knows whether users will want to set
> something interactively or only at startup).

> I suggest we just get rid of the distinction altogether.


I disagree.  It is a useful distinction, and programmers can take
advantage of it to prevent users from setting variables in a way that
they shouldn't (and thence submitting bug reports when they don't get
the desired effect).

I don't find the explanation of Variable Definitions in the Emacs Lisp
manual that Luc cited to be too subtle.  And I don't understand what
startup vs. session time has to do with it: it only has to do with
whether set-variable can be used interactively.

set-variable and customize are independent mechanisms that are enabled
by a doc string convention and the custom-* symbol properties
respectively, and as a programmer I'd like to retain control over those
mechanisms.

--
Kevin Rodgers