Re: reverting non-existent file

[Richard Copley <rcopley@gmail.com>]

On Thu, 14 May 2020 at 20:03, Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> wrote:
>
> > From: Colin Baxter <m43cap@yandex.com>
> > Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org
> > Date: Thu, 14 May 2020 19:52:29 +0100
> >
> >     > I get the error message even if I don't do steps 3 to 6.  And that
> >     > is expected, as a non-existent file cannot be reverted.  So what
> >     > did you find surprising in this behavior?
> >
> >     > (I'm guessing that your locale uses UTF-8 as its codeset, so the
> >     > new file's buffer has utf-8 encoding from the get-go, and thus
> >     > adding the local variable doesn't change the coding-system, and
> >     > you are not asked to revert the buffer.  Which is also expected.)
> >
> >     > Confused.
> >
> > Not now, thanks. I think I was confused by the response "revert-buffer"
> > when I knew I'd yet to save it. And yes, my locale is utf-8.
>
> Hmm... maybe we should not suggest reverting if the file doesn't
> exist?  Would that make this situation less confusing?

Why suggest reverting, whether or not the file exists? The buffer
change just made by add-file-local-variable-prop-line hasn't been
saved to any file yet. Reverting will undo the change, along with any
other unsaved changes.

It seems like a little mistake in the wording of the suggestion. It
might make more sense to advise the user to save and then revert --
except that it wouldn't cause the file-local variable to take effect
anyway. Perhaps I'm misunderstanding what the message means
("revisit"?).

I think it should say just say to run "normal-mode".