Re: Scratch buffer annoyance

[David Reitter <david.reitter@gmail.com>]

On 17 Jul 2007, at 20:37, Robert J. Chassell wrote:

>  1. provide a variable to prevent automatic saving of the *scratch*
>     buffer when you exit;

Can we implement this as a minor mode, which could be used for other  
buffers as well? That way, users could define further persistent  
buffers that would exist across Emacs sessions. I'd find that useful.

>  2. provide a variable to set the *scratch* buffer's initial major  
> mode
>     to lisp-interaction-mode.

`initial-major-mode' already exists and does just that.

> Indeed, the initial-scratch-message says `This buffer
> is for notes you don't want to save ...' and the buffer is in
> lisp-interaction-mode.

I just don't get why people would take "notes" in lisp-interaction-mode.

Mathias Dahl wrote:

> Another popular editor, vim, seems to work just like that. No way I
> can edit as a new user of vim without following the on-screen
> instructions.

Is that a good thing? I don't think so.

Alfred M Szmidt wrote:

> That message could be in the scratch buffer, just like for the
> splash-screen.  Infact, inhibit-splash-screen would become unnecessary
> with this scheme, the splash-screen would be *scratch*.  One could
> then have a inhibit-read-only-splash-screen variable that people could
> flip to get what is the current behaviour.

Why so complicated? Perhaps one could show an empty buffer that has  
buffer-offer-save set to t and leave *scratch* the way it is. People  
would then stop using *scratch* for important stuff that should  
really be saved, but they could start writing right away.

In Aquamacs, we don't display a splash screen, but we display the GNU  
message and copyrights in the Echo area. People get a *scratch*  
buffer in text-mode with buffer-offer-save. I think this gets the  
message across and still allows people to begin their work. But  
displaying an empty buffer as described before might be even better,  
if one really doesn't like the idea of a persistent scratch pad.