Re: More visible mini-buffer prompt face

["Mathias Dahl" <mathias.dahl@gmail.com>]

> Seriously, if a program asks you to type "yes" and press RETURN to
> confirm a possibly dangerous action, and you do look for ways to
> automatize skipping the question... what more could the program do?

I think that part of the problem is that different people have
different opinions
on what a "dangerous" action is (See the previous thread about image auto
detection for a good example... :)), and maybe we sometimes out of laziness take
the easy way out and provide a Yes/No prompt, instead of thinking one
extra time.

(Btw, about the "yes/no" prompt, why do we provide minibuffer history there if
we want to make it harder for the user to dismiss the prompt?)

I would like to recommend trying out having a "kill key" in Emacs. I have bound
a command to F5 that tries to kill the current buffer. If the buffer
has no changes
it will work, if it has unsaved changes, Emacs will beep, with an
error. But, this is
important, I get no prompt, so I cannot by mistake type that "yes" +
RET (bad habit).
Instead I have to stop and think a bit and decide to do a C-x k RET y e s RET
(or, save first and then use F5). Yes, slightly annoying the times where I have
unsaved changes, but most of the time much nicer as I can kill a buffer with a
single keypress.

> Do we start an arms race between prompts and users?

No, oh please no! We try not to get into such a race at all.

> The answer given before ("do not prompt, let him do it and provide
> ways to undo") is good, but not always applicable.

True, unfortunately.  But we should try.

> > However, it does not feel like this is the right thread, or time, to
> > discuss these, sometimes philosophical, matters...
>
> Oops. :)

Oops x 2 :)