From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Juri Linkov Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: C-x C-e with prefix arg Date: Mon, 06 May 2013 11:30:01 +0300 Organization: JURTA Message-ID: <87ip2w1ory.fsf@mail.jurta.org> References: <4D5891EF34DF42D3A479CF83CAF1E43E@us.oracle.com> <87zjw97qo7.fsf@mail.jurta.org> <87zjw9z0fk.fsf@mail.jurta.org> <88878C7DA62F4DC792EEEE03D46C115B@us.oracle.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: plane.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1367830398 25553 80.91.229.3 (6 May 2013 08:53:18 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 6 May 2013 08:53:18 +0000 (UTC) Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org To: "Drew Adams" Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Mon May 06 10:53:18 2013 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([208.118.235.17]) by plane.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1UZHAb-000860-Ce for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Mon, 06 May 2013 10:53:17 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:42181 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1UZHAb-0002b8-2q for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Mon, 06 May 2013 04:53:17 -0400 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([208.118.235.92]:36708) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1UZHAW-0002b3-HC for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 06 May 2013 04:53:13 -0400 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1UZHAU-0005oj-FP for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 06 May 2013 04:53:12 -0400 Original-Received: from ps18281.dreamhost.com ([69.163.218.105]:40408 helo=ps18281.dreamhostps.com) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1UZHAU-0005oU-A6 for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 06 May 2013 04:53:10 -0400 Original-Received: from localhost (ps18281.dreamhostps.com [69.163.218.105]) by ps18281.dreamhostps.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 9E766258B9E93C; Mon, 6 May 2013 01:53:07 -0700 (PDT) In-Reply-To: <88878C7DA62F4DC792EEEE03D46C115B@us.oracle.com> (Drew Adams's message of "Mon, 6 May 2013 00:00:32 -0700") User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/24.3.50 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu) X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: GNU/Linux 2.2.x-3.x (no timestamps) [generic] X-Received-From: 69.163.218.105 X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.14 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-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:159365 Archived-At: > Personally, I think that was a dumb - er - misguided user interface that never > should have been plopped on top of the longstanding eval-and-maybe-print > functionality. Others are free, of course, to think it is handy and extremely > clever. > > The surprise expressed by Kelly Dean in his report for bug #12985 supports my > view of the UI somewhat, I think. The right fix is not just to document the > feature (finally, years after it was introduced) but to just rip it out. (There > are other ways to print an integer value in various formats, and it is easy > enough to have a separate command that does just that.) There are many other commands that change their behavior when called twice, e.g. running `recenter' twice doesn't recenter but unexpectedly moves the current line to window's top. Do you think that typing `C-l' twice is dumb and should be ripped out and reverted to the longstanding recentering functionality because there are other ways to do that? (This question is rhetorical, I don't want to remove it.) > But I doubt the feature will be removed in consequence. The feature could be removed if we will find a better replacement. I see at least two alternatives to improve the `eval-expression' functionality: 1. Use the prefix arg `M-0' to request more information about the value printed by `C-x C-e', `M-:', and `C-j'. Then typing `M-0 C-x C-e' will have the same effect as typing `C-x C-e' twice (the same way as typing `M-0 C-l' has the same effect as typing `C-l' twice). 2. Add a new customizable option to define the default printing format for the numeric values printed by `C-x C-e', `M-:', and `C-j' to accompany two other existing options `eval-expression-print-length' and `eval-expression-print-level' that define the format of the list values while printing list value in `eval-expression'.