Re: C-x C-q more useful as toggle-read-only

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Michael J Downes <epsmjd@ams.org>
> Newsgroups: gnu.emacs.bug
> Date: 24 Oct 2000 10:21:21 -0400
> 
> On Tuesday I check out foo.bar in module A and begin making some
> changes. On Wednesday I get called away to some other tasks. On Friday I
> remember that I was working on something in the module A but can't
> recall which file so I start looking at some files with
> find-file-read-only.

With all due respect, this scenario sounds so convoluted that I'd be
surprised if many users have to deal with it.

For starters, I don't understand why do you use find-file-read-only
for finding a file that can be found using other methods.  You could,
for example, use "find -anewer" or some such.  Emacs offers desktop.el
that would avoid the necessity of remembering what file did you edit,
and recentf.el which remembers a few files you used lately.  You could
use C-x C-f, since any inadvertent changes can be easily undone with
C-x u or M-x revert-buffer.

But even if you do want to use find-file-read-only, you can still
avoid the problems with C-x C-q: type "M-x revert-buffer RET" instead,
and it should remove the read-only bit.

Last, but not least, someone who has special needs that are radically
different from the majority of users can simply rebind C-x C-q, like
you already did.  That's what Emacs is all about.

But to argue that the scenario you've described is important enough to
change a feature introduced 7 years ago is a bit far-fetched, to say
the least.  Many users probably know about C-x C-q only through VC.
It suffices to say that for years I thought that C-x C-q was *only*
meant to check files in and out of VC; only much later I learned that
it also works with normal files.

> But in general it seems to me automatically doing version control
> operations without confirmation violates the principle of least
> surprise

It's not automatic: you _did_ type "C-x C-q", didn't you?