Re: Image mode

[David Kastrup]

Richard Stallman <address@hidden> writes:

>     The user has an idea about what Emacs will do with a file, and
>     will judge based on that whether he wants it to open in Emacs in
>     this manner.
>
> The beginning user sees .jpg and thinks "this is an image; Emacs
> will display it."  If displaying that image will cause some sort of
> harm, he doesn't know any better.

But neither does Emacs.  So there is no sense in Emacs making it more
complicated for the user to display an image.

>     If Emacs does something different than the expected thing, there
>     goes one component of security: user wariness.
>
> Most users are not wary of images.

That's their problem.  And Emacs _can't_ be wary of images since its
knowledge about potential library problems is fuzzy and much weaker
than that of the library authors.

So Emacs can't help users to learn in a sensible manner.  It can, at
best, disturb them.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum