Re: copyright-update in nnfolder [was Re: Emacs 23.2.94 pretest]

[Miles Bader <miles@gnu.org>]

Glenn Morris <rgm@gnu.org> writes:
>> !       (set (make-local-variable 'copyright-update) nil)
>
> I think it would be better for nnfolder just not to do this at all.
> First, how many mail folders happen to contain copyright headers at
> the start?

Sadly, it's all too common for copyright headers to appear in places
that confuse copyright.el; e.g., patch files that update the copyright
(it sees the "from" branch first, so...)!

I presume this sort of very specific workaround wouldn't have been added
to nnfolder unless people had hit

> Second, people should be more selective about enabling features on
> buffer-save. It's not the responsibility of every package that saves a
> buffer to disable every feature (trailing whitespace removal, etc) that
> people might have added to save hooks.

copyright.el, at least, at least _asks_ before doing something, and
rarely actually takes action (because it has fairly narrow criteria for
when an update is needed), so it tends to be just annoying rather than
dangerous (whitespace munging without prompting is downright evil
though).

I agree that there should be a "better" way to do this, but unless there
is, people will continue to do whatever gets the best results on
average; there are annoyances _either_ way.

If there's a convenient way to distinguish "text files" from "other
stuff like mail archives / tar files / ...", then packages like
copyright.el could check that, and ignore any non-text-files...

-miles

-- 
Dawn, n. When men of reason go to bed.