Re: Scratch buffer annoyance

[David Reitter <david.reitter@gmail.com>]

On 17 Jul 2007, at 16:05, Richard Stallman wrote:

>     Wouldn't it be smarter to make the initial splash screen the  
> current
>     buffer when Emacs starts instead?  It would make sense for that  
> to be
>     read-only, and when one does C-x C-q, it could for example  
> clear it
>     and toggle the read-only status of the buffer (with a brief  
> note in
>     the initial splash screen that one can do C-x C-q to convert it  
> into a
>     "scratch" buffer).
>
> It is an interesting idea.  What do others think?

This will make Emacs even more difficult to use for new or occasional  
users. They would need to know a key combination just to get started.  
And it would be much more annoying than the current situation.

What's wrong with

- automatically saving *scratch* in a place other than ~/ (where it  
is out of the way)
   via auto-save and before exiting Emacs, without any user interaction
- automatically restoring *scratch* from that file upon startup (i.e.  
making it persistent)
- not offering to save it anywhere else (even though users may to C-x  
C-w and save it, thereby converting it to a normal, non-persistent  
buffer, and creating an empty *scratch* buffer automatically).

This would preserve the equivalence to a real-life scratch paper that  
one keeps on one's desk, which will not magically disappear  
overnight, but which may be filed somewhere else when needed.

It would be unobtrusive and solve the original problem.

Oh, and it should be in text-mode, because most users will not want  
to hack Elisp.