Re: with-output-to-temp-buffer [Re: reverting CJK input methods]

[Richard Stallman]

    I fully agree with that general principle.  But, for the
    current case, I'm not sure it is the right thing that
    erase-buffer signals such an error considering that it
    removes even the narrowing restriction.

I think I partly misunderstood the problem.  Is the problem that
erase-buffer gets an error when there is read-only text in the buffer?

Maybe you're right that it should not get an error for that.

However, consider the case of a Customize buffer.  That has lots of
read-only text, the idea being that the user should not be able to
edit it.  Should erase-buffer in a Customize buffer leave it empty?
The result would be an undesirable confusion.  We could respond to
that by saying, "So don't do erase-buffer in a Customize buffer."
Maybe that's right, but I am not sure.

So it seems to me that there are some cases where we want erase-buffer
to get rid of read-only text silently, but not all cases.  It seems
better to change the callers, not change erase-buffer.

    If we eval this once,

    (display-message-or-buffer (propertize "abc\n\n" 'read-only t))

That is clearly a bug, but I think the right fix is to change the
caller here too.