Re: Infrastructural complexity. [Was: Blunderbuss ".dir-locals.el" raises everything in its path!!]

[Lennart Borgman <lennart.borgman@gmail.com>]

On Thu, Jul 16, 2009 at 10:09 PM, Alan Mackenzie<acm@muc.de> wrote:
> Hi, everybody!
>
> On Thu, Jul 16, 2009 at 02:38:35PM -0400, Stefan Monnier wrote:
>> >> I think `message' should be improved to collect all messages coming
>> >> in quick succession and display all of them appended to the echo area.
>
>> > Certainly not as the default behavior. Perhaps as an alternative behavior.
>
>> > There is lots of code, I'm sure, that depends on one message supplanting a
>> > previous message. That is, the user is _supposed_ to see only the latest
>> > message, not a concatenation of the last several messages.
>
>> Agreed, it needs to be a new function.
>
>> Maybe we could create a new function (notify-user MSG &rest ARGS) which
>> would return immediately but display something in the echo area (or at
>> the end of the minibuffer) for (at least?) notify-user-time seconds.
>
>> Several successive calls to it would just queue up messages that are
>> later displayed in turn (probably with some sort of "compaction"
>> feature so repeated messages don't bore the user to death).
>
>> Maybe it should be integrated/combined with the display-warning
>> facility.
>
> I think I have to step in and ask what are we doing and why.
>
> <Rant mode>
>
> The suggested functionality would be fine and dandy, but who really cares
> about queueing up successive messages for pretty display?  How many
> not-yet users would say "here's something neat I really want to learn
> Emacs for!"?
>
> It would add complexity to Emacs, and I suggest the increase in
> flexibility is not enough to justify this.  I hope I'm not sounding too
> cynical, but I started this thread almost defeated by complexity which
> seems questionable.  Each little added facility feels compelling at the
> time it's made, but somehow all the little bits gradually mutate into a
> monster.  I ought to know, I'm maintaining CC Mode.  ;-(


I think that making message/error/warning/traceback  better together
decreases the overall complexity.

It adds complexity to this part but lessens that in other parts where
you need the integrated functionality. And getting better feedback
about problems in the ui catches problems earlier and that reduces
complexity when trying to find a problem.