Re: Entering filenames with spaces

[David Kastrup]

Thien-Thi Nguyen <address@hidden> writes:

> David Kastrup <address@hidden> writes:
>
>> Wrong.  Spaces in filenames are no problem to pretty much _any_
>> "unixoid" tool.  The only place where they need escaping is in shells;
>> and if you use file name completion, it will be provided automatically
>> (i.e. by bash).
>
> however, we are not talking about robustness per se; indeed, emacs
> can handle spaces in filenames.  we are talking about the age-old
> class of problem called "preferred default keybindings".  towards
> that end, i am in favor of leaving SPC for completion, and adding a
> blurb and fragment of ~/.emacs code to the manual explaining how to
> (1) self-insert SPC for filenames; (2) arrange for (1) to be the
> default.

Please note that TAB is perfectly common for completion.  We currently
have the minibuffer bindings of minibuffer-complete on TAB, and
minibuffer-complete-word on space.  I severely doubt that anybody
really requires the latter over the former on a regular basis.

> wherever the blurb lands, a pointer to it will surely find its way
> into every faq and wiki searched by the desperately disenfranchised.
> 
> cue next 20 messages: "but those people SHOULDN'T HAVE TO munge
> ~/.emacs for such a simple thing!"  feh.

I don't think that our main priority for keybindings should be to
annoy people into reading the manual.  Even though the traditional
backspace (= C-h) binding on ttys did pretty much that, it was never
really a big selling point for Emacs.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum