Re: comint read-only prompt

[Luc Teirlinck <teirllm@dms.auburn.edu>]

Richard Stallman wrote:

   It seems rather inconsistent to me to make the newest prompt read-only
   and not the other prompts.

JD Smith wrote:

   So there are three options for old prompts:

	   1. Leave them read-only by virtue of a read-only text-property. 
	      Any attempt to kill or delete any part of the entirety of
	      older prompts generates an error.
	   2. Leave them read-only by virtue of modification and
	      insert-in-front-hooks.  Attempts to delete any part of the
	      prompts signals an error, but the entire prompt can be killed
	      without complaint.
	   3. Leave them read-write.


I believe there is one single important reason to make the latest
prompt read-only: it corresponds to the current command line.  This
reason does not apply to old prompts.

I quite often want to edit or "clean up" comint application buffers.
Option 1 forces one to play around with inhibit-read-only to
accomplish this.  Option 1 is currently implemented in ielm.  It is
extremely inconvenient.

I prefer option 3.  Option 2 might work too.

Sincerely,

Luc.