bug#59212: 29.0.50; [PATCH] Set default value of bookmark Type

[Stefan Kangas <stefankangas@gmail.com>]

severity 59212 wishlist
thanks

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

>> From: Gabriel <gabriel376@hotmail.com>
>> Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2022 05:56:22 -0300
>>
>> Description:
>> Not a bug per se, but a suggestion for improvement in how Bookmark
>> displays the Type (added by commit 7c995264359824cc1aca40ca37201db5ed44e659).
>>
>> Currently, bookmark-bmenu-list (C-x r l) displays a column named Type,
>> which has a proper value for all handlers (e.g.: Eshell, VC, EWW etc)
>> except for regular files, in which an empty string is displayed. I
>> believe the current behavior could be improved by displaying a default
>> value ("Files") to make the interface more uniform, explicit and to
>> avoid confusion.
>>
>> Steps:
>> 1) emacs -Q
>> 2) M-x eshell
>> 3) C-x r m <RET>
>> 4) C-x C-f ~/foo.bar
>> 5) C-x r m <RET>
>> 6) C-x r b
>>
>> These steps will add two bookmarks (eshell and foo.bar) and will open
>> the Bookmarks list. The Type column will have values "" and
>> "Eshell". After the patch below is applied, the Type column will have
>> values "File" and "Eshell".
>
> Thanks.
>
> Karl, any comments?

I'm not Karl, but I've experimented with something similar before and I
found two things:

1. I had to add a type for Dired bookmarks (which are not Files) to
   avoid confusion.

2. Using a default name (I also used "Files", IIRC), just made my long
   list of bookmarks more busy with little benefit.  If anything, it
   made it harder to navigate, as it was harder to make out the
   "special" types of bookmarks.

So all in all, I was not a huge fan of the change.

If we want to add this, I suggest adding a defcustom so that users can
enable or disable this functionality to their liking (or change "Files"
into something else).  I might prefer to disable it, for example.