Re: Fundamental mode vs. special mode

[Christoph Scholtes <cschol2112@googlemail.com>]

Chong Yidong <cyd@stupidchicken.com> writes:

> It's not a good idea to add anything to Fundamental mode.  The point of
> it is to be fundamental.

OK.

> Anyway, binding "q" to `quit-window' is no good; I imagine some users
> expect want to be able to edit the buffer.  Same with other cases like
> the *Messages* buffer.

OK. I guess to me a buffer like *Shell Mode Output* is a read-only
buffer, hence `special'. If I want to edit the output of a shell command
I can always create buffer and insert the output into it with M-1
M-!. That's what I would have to do in a shell outside Emacs, no? On the
other hand, I can see how someone might think the current behavior is an
advantage.

As a user, I feel like buffers Emacs creates, which show some kind of
status information (logs, shell output etc.), I should be able to read
and acknowledge (e.g. with `q') like other `special' buffers. It feels
like quite often I have to think about what the correct command is for
this buffer, where I feel it should be more natural from a UI point of
view.

But then again, maybe I just have spent too much time in the non-free
world with its UI paradigms. ;)

Christoph