Re: Semi-recent addition - mailto local groups

[Simon Josefsson <jas@extundo.com>]

prj@po.cwru.edu (Paul Jarc) writes:

>>> Why shouldn't that be allowed here?  It seems to work for me.
>>
>> It works, but a "*" as the first character in variable documentation
>> signals to Emacs that the variable is something that the user would
>> like to be able to set interactively with M-x set-variable RET.
>
> Right.  M-x set-variable RET is what I'm saying works for me.

Ah, ok.

> (I though maybe the customize stuff might break it somehow, but it
> didn't.)  I can see that users would not set the variable this way
> very often, but I don't see why we should prohibit it.  What harm
> does it do to allow it?

Polute the namespace for interactively set variables?  It's not easy
to decide if this variable is something you would set interactively,
but if all variables are allowed to be set interactively, there is
little use of the "*" character.  Hm.  Which I kind of agree with
(that the "*" character is useless, that is), all user variables can
be set interactively and per-session using Custom anyway.  O well, I
dunno.