From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Alan Mackenzie Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Rant on ... Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2016 20:47:29 +0000 Message-ID: <20161117204729.GA3461@acm.fritz.box> NNTP-Posting-Host: blaine.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: blaine.gmane.org 1479415686 8079 195.159.176.226 (17 Nov 2016 20:48:06 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@blaine.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2016 20:48:06 +0000 (UTC) User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.24 (2015-08-30) To: emacs-devel@gnu.org Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Thu Nov 17 21:48:03 2016 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([208.118.235.17]) by blaine.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.84_2) (envelope-from ) id 1c7TbG-0001dc-Ro for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Thu, 17 Nov 2016 21:48:02 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:33196 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1c7TbK-0005H3-7O for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Thu, 17 Nov 2016 15:48:06 -0500 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:42329) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1c7TbD-0005Gl-LW for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 17 Nov 2016 15:48:00 -0500 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1c7Tb6-000081-Ms for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 17 Nov 2016 15:47:59 -0500 Original-Received: from ocolin.muc.de ([193.149.48.4]:22508 helo=mail.muc.de) by eggs.gnu.org with smtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1c7Tb6-00007n-HH for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 17 Nov 2016 15:47:52 -0500 Original-Received: (qmail 22604 invoked by uid 3782); 17 Nov 2016 20:47:49 -0000 Original-Received: from acm.muc.de (p548C6C37.dip0.t-ipconnect.de [84.140.108.55]) by colin.muc.de (tmda-ofmipd) with ESMTP; Thu, 17 Nov 2016 21:47:48 +0100 Original-Received: (qmail 3601 invoked by uid 1000); 17 Nov 2016 20:47:29 -0000 Content-Disposition: inline X-Delivery-Agent: TMDA/1.1.12 (Macallan) X-Primary-Address: acm@muc.de X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: FreeBSD 9.x [fuzzy] X-Received-From: 193.149.48.4 X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.21 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: "Emacs-devel" Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:209457 Archived-At: Hello, Emacs. I'm trying to investigate bug #16184 (where on attempting C-u C-M-x on certain elisp macros, edebug throws the error "Wrong type argument: consp, nil"). I set debug-on-error to t, then repeat the procedure to get a backtrace. The information looks useful, especially when I set truncate-lines to nil. Which is a pain in the posterior to have to do EVERY TIME. What is the thinking behind using truncate-lines to hide information from the user? This is a minor niggle, but it happens so often that it all adds up to a significant nuisance. Are there really hackers who prefer to see only some of the relevant debugging information? But this is nothing compared with the practice of only printing some of the backtrace. Much of the info I want to see has been omitted and replaced by "...". For example, in the middle of one of the backtrace's lines appears: (edebug-after (edebug-before 0) 5 (let ((foo ...)))) . This makes me angry. What patronisingly insulting piece of Emacs has decided I don't really want to see what "..." is hiding? Does it think the full output might overtax my brain? Does it think I'm only interested in seeing a rough outline rather than the full details? How dare it! I would really like to spend the rest of the evening investigating bug #16184. Instead I'm forced, once again, to spend valuable time trying to identify which arcane settings I need to set to non-default to stop Emacs hiding the truth from me. (Just for information, I set print-le\(ngth\|vel\) to nil many years ago, and I've just tried setting edebug-print-le\(ngth\|vel\) to nil, to no avail). If anybody knows offhand what settings I need to make, please tell me. Would anybody object to my getting rid of this obfuscation in Emacs, and setting the appropriate defaults (whatever they are) not arbitrarily to truncate backtraces and other info users have requested? -- Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).