Re: Changes in emacs.el

[Michael Heerdegen]

Cecil Westerhof <Cecil@decebal.nl> writes:

> I now added:
>     (setq custom-file "~/.emacs.d/.emacs-custom.el")
>     (load custom-file t nil t t)
>
> There is only one problem:
>     ;; Your init file should contain only one such instance.
>
> Now there will be two. I will see if this is going to give problems.

If you have a separate custom file, your init file can contain as much
`custom-set-variables' or `custom-set-faces' as you want, AFAIK.  The
limitation only exists so that Emacs can automatically edit it and can
be sure it doesn't miss anything.  If you have a separate custom file,
you can do what you want in your init file, because it's then not
subject to automatic editing.

Of course, it would be better style to avoid `custom-set-variables' in
your init file and use standard Elisp instead (I mean `setq',
`setq-default' etc.).

> Also: why does Emacs do this? I never do anything with custom.

I know that some code in vanilla Emacs or third party packages use the
customization file for storing settings.  You need not use the
customization interface for this to happen.  It is arguable if this is
always necessary, but I can live with it.

In your case, this was the apparently the cause:

  Gnus supports Cancel Locks in News.
 
  This means a header `Cancel-Lock' is inserted in news
  posting.  It is used to determine if you wrote an article or
  not (for canceling and superseding).  Gnus generates a random
  password string the first time you post a message, and saves
  it in your `~/.emacs' using the Custom system.  While the
  variable is called `canlock-password', it is not security
  sensitive data.  Publishing your canlock string on the web
  will not allow anyone to be able to anything she could not
  already do.  The behavior can be changed by customizing
  `message-insert-canlock'.



Regards,

Michael.