Re: 23.0.60; whitespace.el mishap

[Miles Bader <miles@gnu.org>]

Vinicius Jose Latorre <viniciusjl@ig.com.br> writes:
> Well, indeed the old whitespace-buffer had reported
> where the bogus whitespace had happened.
>
> Instead of reporting, the new whitespace-mode
> displays visually the bogus whitespace.
>
> Is it ok if the new whitespace-buffer is removed?
>
> Maybe a better alternative should be to create a
> whitespace-report command which reports like the old
> whitespace-buffer.

My personal opinion is that the old whitespace mode was pretty wacky,
and had lots of unneeded features and features which didn't follow Emacs
conventions.  It doesn't seem necessary to me to _exactly_ preserve the
interface (maybe some def-obsolete-alias could be used in some case),
just keep those commands which were actually useful, and maybe try to
make them follow emacs conventions better.

E.g., how about:

  + `suspicious-whitespace-mode' -- highlights only "suspicious"
    whitespace, i.e., that which probably should be removed. This is
    sort of like the old "whitespace-buffer" command, but implemented as
    a proper mode, or like your "whitespace-mode", but only highlights
    suspicious whitespace.  [dunno about the term "suspicious", but you
    know what I mean]

  + `cleanup-whitespace' -- removes suspicious whitespace [same
    definition as suspicious-whitespace-mode]

-Miles

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