bug#57847: Emacs Reference Lisp Manual on defcustom

[Stefan Kangas]

severity 57847 wishlist
thanks

uzibalqa via "Bug reports for GNU Emacs, the Swiss army knife of text
editors" <bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org> writes:

> I am reading the Elisp manual

This is from An Introduction to Programming in Emacs Lisp:

    (info "(eintr) defcustom")

> 16.2 Specifying Variables using defcustom
>
> The custom-set-variables function works somewhat differently than a setq. 
> While I have never learned the differences, I modify the custom-set-variables 
> expressions in my .emacs file by hand: I make the changes in what appears to 
> me to be a reasonable manner and have not had any problems. Others prefer to 
> use the Customization command and let Emacs do the work for them.
>
> I myself use customize for hardly anything. Mostly, I write expressions 
> myself.
>
> Why are we talking like this !!!  "I have never learned the differences" and 
> "I myself use customize for hardly anything."

That's just the style that this manual is written in.  Maybe we could
explain what `custom-set-*' actually does instead, or even mention the
new `setopt'.  Or we could just leave it alone: either way is fine by
me.