Re: Q on minibuffer-message

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> From: "Drew Adams" <drew.adams@oracle.com>
> Date: Mon, 23 Jan 2006 16:10:49 -0800
> Cc: 
> 
> Someone gives you a command that has maybe 10 or 100 possible calls to
> `minibuffer-message' sprinkled throughout its execution tree. You're going
> to use `defadvice' to try to slice and dice away the message appearances? Or
> you're going to rewrite the command, so that it uses a non-interactive
> helper function or accepts a flag that controls message appearance or tests
> whether it was called interactively?
> 
> The original author intended it only as an interactive command, but you see
> that you can use its functionality as is - you just want to inhibit its
> messages.

Are we talking about a well-written, clean function?  Or are we
talking about something that shouldn't have seen the light of the day?
I get the impression that I'm thinking mostly about the former, while
you have the latter before your mind's eyes.

If it's a badly written function, then yes, I'd rewrite it, or urge
the author to do so.

>     In other words, you are asking for a mechanism to subvert the intent
>     of the author of the function which calls `message'.
> 
> Yes. It's far from atypical to reuse something in a way that was not
> foreseen by the original author. Probably most reuse fits that description.

A well written code doesn't need to be subverted to be reused.

> In any case, `minibuffer-message-timeout' apparently has no effect
> whatsoever currently: a 2-second delay is apparently hard-coded.

That's a different issue, with a different solution.