Re: Loading files at startup (desktop) and revert-buffer leave buffers **.

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@is.elta.co.il>]

On Mon, 25 Nov 2002, Alan Mackenzie wrote:

> It seems to me that one should only be prompted to save a buffer to a
> file (e.g. on C-x C-s, or C-x k) when one has changed the substance of
> that buffer, not merely the way it has been displayed.  What is the
> rationale behind prompting a user to save a "changed" file, merely
> because he has changed its display within emacs to yellow letters, for
> example?  The same goes for the two stars displayed on the mode-line.

Think about Emacs as a word processor which can save the formatting and 
typeface of characters in the buffer's file.  In that case, when a 
typeface changes, the file's contents change.  The fact that Emacs 
currently doesn't save faces in the file is mostly irrelevant; it could 
start doing that in the future, if, for example, compilers will begin to 
accept XML files as sources.

Or look at it this way: when the program's source is visited by Emacs in 
another session, it's again fontified as it was before.  For all 
practical purposes, the face was ``saved and restored''; the fact that it 
didn't come from the file is something that you know about Emacs's 
internal operation, that's all.