Re: Clarification on org-startup-fold behavior vs. docs

[John Hendy <jw.hendy@gmail.com>]

On Tue, Oct 19, 2021 at 12:28 PM Ihor Radchenko <yantar92@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> John Hendy <jw.hendy@gmail.com> writes:
> The value should be a symbol, not a string:
>
> (setq org-startup-folded 'overview)
>
> customise interface even tries to warn you that something is wrong:
>
> > In addition, M-x customize-variable for org-startup-folded says:
> >
> > #+begin_quote
> > org-startup-folded: "overview"
> >     State : CHANGED outside Customize. (mismatch) <--- this is a clue
> >    Non-nil means entering Org mode will switch to OVERVIEW. Hide

Thanks, this is helpful. I would, then, chalk this up to my ignorance
on emacs variables and such. This note also appeared when I was using
emacs -Q and it said I couldn't change it because I might have started
with -q, so I thought the "mismatch" might have just been some
artifact of that. I didn't know what "mismatch" meant and suspected it
might merely mean that I'd set this in a config, not with M-x
customize-variable.

> If you select the value from customise interface, Emacs would set it
> correctly.  Direct setting is indeed possible, but you need to consult
> how the variable is defined.  Note the :type specifier below (also, see
> 15.4 Customization Types section of Elisp manual).

This is a good reminder and I've done this before (see what it does to
my config custom variable section, then replicate directly). I didn't
think to do it this time.

My remaining question is why anything except nil (string or not) isn't
non-nil? Like I get that to set a specific setting, you'd need to
match a defined variable... but is it the case that non-parseable
types (expected var, got string) evaluates to nil?

I think the docs still throw me off. Note that showeverthing in the
lead up to the options is fontified as a variable (no backticks), but
below they are all backticked. I actually thought those were all
quoted, only realizing now they are [probably] backticks. I didn't
expect  both fixed width (which my brain reads as "code/variable")
*and* backticks on top.
https://orgmode.org/manual/In_002dbuffer-Settings.html

Actually, now I'm realizing these backticks go in the opposite slant
as what I'm used to? Or are they really single quotes, indeed?


Thanks again,
John
>
> Best,
> Ihor