Re: Sorting of directories in dired

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> From: "Drew Adams" <drew.adams@oracle.com>
> Date: Thu, 7 Jul 2005 09:43:59 -0700
> Cc: Emacs-Pretest-Bug <emacs-pretest-bug@gnu.org>
> 
> I've been doing the same thing Juanma does (code above). But I wonder if
> there isn't a bug in `ls-lisp.el'. Notice the commented-out line in
> `ls-lisp-emulation' (below). Commenting it out does not make sense in light
> of the code of `ls-ignore-case', `ls-lisp-dirs-first', and
> `ls-lisp-verbosity', together with the fact that `ls-lisp.el' is preloaded.

It does make sense: we don't want those options to have non-nil
values, we want ls-lisp to produce the same results as with a real
`ls' program.

One problem with making the Windows-like behavior the default is that
if one has a ported ls.exe and uses it to produce Dired buffers, the
order will be different.  Such inconsistency is bad.

> The latter options should not bother to test `ls-lisp-emulation'. They
> appear dependent on `ls-lisp-emulation', but if that is set by a user, it
> will be set _after_ all of these preloaded defcustoms, so the user will in
> any case be obliged to set each of these options, not just
> `ls-lisp-emulation'.

Not true: the user could load ls-lisp from .emacs and then customize
the options, including ls-lisp-emulation.

> I would like to see the commented line uncommented again, so that these
> variables all do what they were originally desiged to do for Windows.

If that line is uncommented, preloading will cause ls-lisp to produce
Windows-like order, something that we decided not to do.

> People, such as Edward, who want "consistent" behavior across platforms
> (e.g. showing columns that make no sense outside of Unix), could always
> change the option values, but the default values should make sense for each
> platform.

That's not the Emacs philosophy, AFAIK.  Consistent behavior across
platforms is deemed more important than consistency with other
platform-specific applications.

> On Windows, it makes sense to show directories first, ignore case
> differences, and get rid of columns that make no sense.

The order used by Windows tools is IMHO stupid and user-unfriendly: it
assumes, for some reason, that people do not look up directories and
files together.