Re: how-many/count-matches for non-interactive use

[Ken Manheimer <klm@zope.com>]

Thanks, all, for including me in the discussion about misuses of 
interactive-p.  I'm the developer of allout, and haven't had time yet to 
examine the specifics.  I hope to do so this week, but have one 
preliminary comment.

On Sat, 23 Oct 2004, Richard Stallman wrote:

> Many calls to interactive-p appear in functions that are not commands.
> The only way interactive-p can return non-nil is when these functions
> are called from commands run from macros.  It doesn't seem right for
> allout commands to move the cursor differently when they are run from
> macros.  So I am pretty sure these are bugs.

This use *may* be deliberate.  Allout has a special "hot-spot" operation 
mode, where the behavior of the movement functions varies depending on 
whether or not you started from on top of a bullet glyph.  The thing is 
that this behavioral nuance should not happen when being called 
non-interactively.  It *may* be that the interactive-p conditioning is for 
that purpose.

> I think this is the right way to fix these bugs, but I don't use
> allout.el.  Could someone who uses it please check this?

As i said though, the above is an entirely preliminary thought.  I'm 
hoping to get time this evening or tomorrow to investigate, and try out 
the proposed changes to see if this is disrupted.  I'll report back when i 
know more, one way or another.

Ken Manheimer
klm@zope.com (please shift to ken.manheimer@gmail.com or klm@i.am)