On Fri, Oct 18, 2019 at 10:11 AM Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> wrote:

> The byte compiler already knows to ignore .dir-locals.el, at least in
> one of its commands.

[Slightly aside:]

Too late now, but perhaps .dir-locals.el should have not used the .el
extension. Perhaps we should've reserved .el for lisp code (in the usual
meaning of the term).

 .dir-locals.el is just a configuration file, even if it contains elisp
data. .emacs.desktop is a save file containing real elisp code (I mean,
function calls like setq and desktop-create-buffer, not just data lists)
and it's not called .emacs-desktop.el, after all. As a consequence, I
imagine, of nobody usually either editing or directly loading
.emacs.desktop (though I've edited it a few times).

[On topic:]

I think I agree with Eli. It would perhaps make sense to have (in the
distribution, or in ELPA) a general mode to edit lisp data with all the
bells & whistles, and if so, its facilities would likely influence the way
other elisp data files are designed in the future. But a mode just to edit
one specific file type seems too much complexity for too little gain.