Re: Documentation not clear for the Lisp function set-variable

[Juri Linkov]

> IMO, the user does M-x set-variable because he already knows the
> variable he wants to set (and it's even likely he read the doc and
> knows whether it is obsolete or not, though I'm willing to accept
> there are users who simply set a variable because they read about it
> in an old doc somewhere) and completion is just a help to do less
> typing. So in my view, `set-variable' should not filter out any user
> variable, whether it is an obsolete variable or an obsolete
> alias. I certainly would be very pissed if I wanted to set
> `messages-buffer-max-lines' and had to type it fully because
> `set-variable' had decided that `message-log-max' was the way to go.

`messages-buffer-max-lines' is not an obsolete alias for
`message-log-max'.  Rather it's the other way round: `message-log-max'
is an obsolete variable (thought it is not marked as such yet), but
its alias `messages-buffer-max-lines' is not obsolete (it was added
recently as a better name instead of `message-log-max').  But anyway
I see your point.  I agree that filtering is not very necessary, and
think that it would be sufficient to display a warning for obsolete
variables and obsolete aliases after selecting the variable but before
setting its value.

-- 
Juri Linkov
http://www.jurta.org/emacs/