Making it easier to enable dired-x

Making it easier to enable dired-x

[Deniz Dogan]

I'm reading (info "(dired-x) Installation") about how to enable dired-x.

I somehow feel that it should be an easier way to enable dired-x,
specifically through "customize", than to manually enter some Lisp
code in the init file. Furthermore, it wasn't obvious to me that I
need to look in the manual to find out how to enable dired-x.

What do you think? Is it a good idea or even possible to add a
defcustom to dired.el which decides whether or not to load dired-x
with dired?

-- 
Deniz Dogan

RE: Making it easier to enable dired-x

[Drew Adams]

> I somehow feel that it should be an easier way to enable dired-x,
> specifically through "customize", than to manually enter some Lisp
> code in the init file. Furthermore, it wasn't obvious to me that I
> need to look in the manual to find out how to enable dired-x.
> 
> What do you think? Is it a good idea or even possible to add a
> defcustom to dired.el which decides whether or not to load dired-x
> with dired?

Nowadays we should "enable" it by default.  It should just be part of dired.
Likewise dired-aux.  (Just one opinion.)

Re: Making it easier to enable dired-x

[Ted Zlatanov]

On Wed, 16 Mar 2011 07:00:20 -0700 "Drew Adams" <drew.adams@oracle.com> wrote: 

>> I somehow feel that it should be an easier way to enable dired-x,
>> specifically through "customize", than to manually enter some Lisp
>> code in the init file. Furthermore, it wasn't obvious to me that I
>> need to look in the manual to find out how to enable dired-x.
>> 
>> What do you think? Is it a good idea or even possible to add a
>> defcustom to dired.el which decides whether or not to load dired-x
>> with dired?

DA> Nowadays we should "enable" it by default.  It should just be part of dired.
DA> Likewise dired-aux.  (Just one opinion.)

I agree, there's no reason to make those two optional.  The
functionality they provide is useful.

Ted

Re: Making it easier to enable dired-x

[Glenn Morris]

Deniz Dogan wrote:

> I'm reading (info "(dired-x) Installation") about how to enable dired-x.
>
> I somehow feel that it should be an easier way to enable dired-x,
> specifically through "customize", than to manually enter some Lisp
> code in the init file. Furthermore, it wasn't obvious to me that I
> need to look in the manual to find out how to enable dired-x.

Personally I think the instructions could be summarized as (require
'dired-x) at no great loss. If you want to add a defcustom for the
equivalent of that, fine. I don't think it should be enabled by default
though.

Re: Making it easier to enable dired-x

[Deniz Dogan]

2011/3/16 Glenn Morris <rgm@gnu.org>:
> Deniz Dogan wrote:
>
>> I'm reading (info "(dired-x) Installation") about how to enable dired-x.
>>
>> I somehow feel that it should be an easier way to enable dired-x,
>> specifically through "customize", than to manually enter some Lisp
>> code in the init file. Furthermore, it wasn't obvious to me that I
>> need to look in the manual to find out how to enable dired-x.
>
> Personally I think the instructions could be summarized as (require
> 'dired-x) at no great loss. If you want to add a defcustom for the
> equivalent of that, fine. I don't think it should be enabled by default
> though.
>

Why don't you think it should be enabled by default?

Re: Making it easier to enable dired-x

[Glenn Morris]

Deniz Dogan wrote:

> Why don't you think it should be enabled by default?

Well I've never really used it, so take this with a grain of salt, but
after tidying it up a bit recently, the impression I got was that it
contains a few useful features and a lot of cruft.

Eg dired-filename-at-point is not massively different to ffap and
thing-at-pt, stuff like "hands-off-my-x-keys" seems clunky, dired-x's
local variables are now replaced by dir-locals, there's 50 lines and 3
commands dedicated just to deleting TeX and patch temp files, etc.

Plus it has its own manual, which is ~ 80% of the length of dired.texi,
which would have to be merged in somehow.

Re: Making it easier to enable dired-x

[Stefan Monnier]

>> Why don't you think it should be enabled by default?

> Well I've never really used it, so take this with a grain of salt, but
> after tidying it up a bit recently, the impression I got was that it
> contains a few useful features and a lot of cruft.

> Eg dired-filename-at-point is not massively different to ffap and
> thing-at-pt, stuff like "hands-off-my-x-keys" seems clunky, dired-x's
> local variables are now replaced by dir-locals, there's 50 lines and 3
> commands dedicated just to deleting TeX and patch temp files, etc.

> Plus it has its own manual, which is ~ 80% of the length of dired.texi,
> which would have to be merged in somehow.

I tend to agree.  I would welcome adding the remaining useful
functionality of dired-x into dired and then making dired-x obsolete.


        Stefan

Re: Making it easier to enable dired-x

[Leo]

On 2011-03-18 10:24 +0800, Stefan Monnier wrote:
> I tend to agree. I would welcome adding the remaining useful
> functionality of dired-x into dired and then making dired-x obsolete.

I agree with this. dired.el and dired-aux.el are very well documented
(useful comments here and there). dired-x.el looks a bit hackish
although I enable it anyway.

Leo

Re: Making it easier to enable dired-x

[Tassilo Horn]

Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> writes:

Hi!

>> Eg dired-filename-at-point is not massively different to ffap and
>> thing-at-pt,

`dired-filename-at-point' returns the expanded file name in a dired
buffer.  (thing-at-point 'filename) returns only the last part.  So the
former is clearly useful when writing code operating it dired buffers.

>> stuff like "hands-off-my-x-keys" seems clunky, dired-x's local
>> variables are now replaced by dir-locals, there's 50 lines and 3
>> commands dedicated just to deleting TeX and patch temp files, etc.

Yes, for those, I agree.

>> Plus it has its own manual, which is ~ 80% of the length of
>> dired.texi, which would have to be merged in somehow.
>
> I tend to agree.  I would welcome adding the remaining useful
> functionality of dired-x into dired and then making dired-x obsolete.

From dired-aux, I think the subdir stuff is really useful.

From dired-x, I frequently use `dired-jump' and `dired-omit-mode'.

Bye,
Tassilo

Re: Making it easier to enable dired-x

[Stefan Monnier]

>> From dired-aux, I think the subdir stuff is really useful.

AFAIK, dired-aux is activated by default (it simply contains functions
which may not always be used so they're moved to a separate file that's
autoloaded).


        Stefan

Re: Making it easier to enable dired-x

[Richard Stallman]

dired-x exists because someone proposed various extensions to Dired
which would have taken too much work to fully integrate into Dired,
but I didn't want to say no to them entirely.  So I said he could put
them in dired-x.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation
51 Franklin St
Boston MA 02110
USA
www.fsf.org, www.gnu.org
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