Re: copyright-update in nnfolder [was Re: Emacs 23.2.94 pretest]

[Stefan Monnier <monnier@IRO.UMontreal.CA>]

>> *** lisp/gnus/nnfolder.el	2011-01-02 23:50:46 +0000
>> --- lisp/gnus/nnfolder.el	2011-02-15 15:47:59 +0000
> [...]
>> !       (set (make-local-variable 'copyright-update) nil)

> I think it would be better for nnfolder just not to do this at all.
> First, how many mail folders happen to contain copyright headers at
> the start?
> Second, people should be more selective about enabling features on
> buffer-save. It's not the responsibility of every package that saves a
> buffer to disable every feature (trailing whitespace removal, etc) that
> people might have added to save hooks.

That's a very good point.  But it's also true that it's reasonable for
users to be able to set such features globally rather than having to do
it for each and every major mode that they happen to use to edit
normal files.

There are some related concepts where we also take such special
precautions, such as ignoring coding cookies in tar files.
We should probably try to come up with some more general approach to
solve all these centrally.
E.g. define some notion of "normal file", so copyright-update can be
used in "all normal files" and coding cookies would be ignored in
non-normal files.


        Stefan