Re: New hook before-region-change-functions wanted

[Alan Mackenzie <acm@muc.de>]

Hello, Richard.

On Sat, Sep 09, 2017 at 22:44:19 -0400, Richard Stallman wrote:
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> [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
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>   > > That kind of hook is pandora's box.  It is too powerful, and would
>   > > interact in complex ways.  There will be many cases that are hard to
>   > > implement correctly, or cause trouble.  To implement this probably
>   > > means future hassles for ourselves and for package developers.

>   > I actually implemented it, and it worked as intended.

> I think you mean it works as intended in your use case.  I am talking
> about something else.

Note I said "implemented", not "have implemented" and "worked", not
"works" - eveything in the past tense, not the present.

> My experience says that this kind of feature is likely to fail in
> various peculiar cases, which would make it a maintenance burden.
> Also, it is likely to show show strange confusing behavior which would
> lead to trouble in debugging.  We are better off without it.

I accept this, though not without some regret.  I am no longer pressing
ahead with this hook.

> The other approach has the virtue of being entirely internal.  It will
> not require an announcement, or adding to the Lisp manual.

Yes.  This other approach is slightly more difficult to debug with, but
not unreasonably so.

Again, thanks for interfering, here.  :-)

> -- 
> Dr Richard Stallman
> President, Free Software Foundation (gnu.org, fsf.org)
> Internet Hall-of-Famer (internethalloffame.org)
> Skype: No way! See stallman.org/skype.html.

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).