Re: A wish, a plea

[Karl Fogel <kfogel@red-bean.com>]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:
> We can't get rid of the problem by changing the initial buffer.  Emacs
> normally starts up with no files visited, and it has to have some
> current buffer.  Whatever that buffer is, it will raise the same issue.
>
> So I think we should do these things:
>
> 1. Arrange to set buffer-offer-save to t in *scratch*
> if it is ever changed.

If a buffer starts out unchanged, and is never changed, then
buffer-offer-save won't cause the user to be prompted to save on exit,
right?  (IOW, I think the above is equivalent to just "set
buffer-offer-save to t".)  If we have our own initial text in the
buffer, we can just initialize buffer-modified-p to nil.

> 2. Turn on auto-saving for it.  (Just how Emacs should check for an
> auto-save file for *scratch* could take some fine tuning.)

Yes, for whatever initial selected buffer we have ("*unnamed*" or
"*scratch*" or whatever).

> 3. Maybe also start it out read-only.

What would this solve?

(I've seen a lot of new users flail around with vi, wondering why they
can't just start typing when they open it.)

> 4. Maybe also pop up a warning if the user types more than 500
> self-inserting characters in *scratch* without ever doing Lisp
> evaluation.

As long as we're autosaving, I'm not sure that's necessary.  (I'm
assuming that proposal applies to any default-selected buffer, whether
"*scratch*" or some other name.)

-Karl