Re: autorevert.el

[Luc Teirlinck <teirllm@dms.auburn.edu>]

Stefan Monnier wrote:

   Too bad we can't do better, but thanks for double checking for me.

I am sure we could save a few lines of duplicate code by rewriting and
/or recombining auto-revert-active-p, auto-revert-buffer-p and
auto-revert-handler, as well as maybe some other functions.  I do not
know whether that would be worth the trouble given that there appears
to be plenty of other more user-visible unfinished business.

   > I need some way to tell not only dired, but other non-file
   > buffers as well, not to display the revert messages they usually do.

   Like which others?

Well, I know none at the moment, but the non-file autoreverting
applies to all non-file buffers with a revert-buffer function, so
there is plenty of "opportunity" for further verbosity problems,
given the generality.

   And why does dired display a message anyway?
   It seems just wrong to me, since the user knows he reverted the buffer if
   he did M-x revert-buffer (and indeed M-x revert-buffer in a file buffer
   does not output any message).  It seems these messages should be output
   (when needed) by the code that calls revert-buffer-function.
   As does auto-revert, for example.
   I.e. I suggest to just throw out the dired messages.

(As a side remark, reverting a dired buffer can be done with the `g'
command.)  I would personally favor getting rid of the messages, but I
do not know whether other people would agree with us on this.  It is
possible that the message gives some reassurance to some users if the
dired buffer did not visibly change.  It is also possible that on very
slow machines reverting a really huge dired buffer may take a
non-trivial amount of time.  But displaying an hourglass or so might
convey the same "Emacs is busy" message anyway.

Sincerely,

Luc.