Re: hide-show messages

[Thien-Thi Nguyen <ttn@gnuvola.org>]

() Andreas Röhler <andreas.roehler@online.de>
() Thu, 21 Oct 2010 19:39:17 +0200

   >     Patch against latest source attached.
   >
   > Unfortunately, the patch does not document the changed interface.

   got it from

   git://repo.or.cz/emacs.git

Sorry, i was not clear.  Here is a verbose explanation of that
sentence's intended meaning: A function's arglist is its interface.
Before, ‘hs-show-all’ took no args; your patch introduces an (optional)
arg; thus, there was a change in the interface.  Two accompanying pieces
of documentation are customary in cases like this:

 - that of the interface
 - that of the change in both interface and functionality

A preferable patch would include some modifcation to the docstring
describing the optional arg as well as a suitable ChangeLog entry,
but as it turned out, these were missing.

   BTW your mail address there seems wrong.

Yes, it has lapsed.  Please feel free to ignore it.

   > Fortunately, this is an opportunity to revisit the need for those
   > messages.  When hideshow.el was originally written, computers were
   > slower and such a message was reassuring when waiting for a big buffer
   > to be processed.  Nowadays, i think it is better to completely remove
   > those messages as they have become more annoying than reassuring.

This was my roundabout way of suggesting you post another (simpler)
patch, removing those messages altogether.  Ignoring cruft elegantly
is ok, but pruning it (elegantly or not) is better.