Re: Scratch buffer annoyance

[David Kastrup]

Richard Stallman <address@hidden> writes:

>     > As I understand it, part of the idea of this change is that
>     > there won't BE a *scratch* buffer if you don't request it
>     > in `initial-buffer-contents'.
>
>     It is very useful to create a *scratch* buffer at startup, even if it is
>     not displayed immediately.
>
> Why do you find it particularly useful?  I want to try to gauge
> how many users would find it desirable.  Would they be so many
> that it would be unacceptable to recommend they use this recipe
> to set it up?
>
>   (with-current-buffer (get-buffer-create "*scratch*")
>     (lisp-interaction-mode))

Personally, my workflow happens to make me delete the scratch buffer
occasionally, and revisit it later.  So I want to be able to have it,
when it gets recreated, to be in lisp-interaction-mode.

In fact, people thought this so desirable that we have

    * Changes in Emacs 21.2

    [...]

    ** When the *scratch* buffer is recreated, its mode is set from
    initial-major-mode, which normally is lisp-interaction-mode,
    instead of using default-major-mode.

I would like to retain the ability to do this, though I agree that
"initial-major-mode" is a completely misleading name for it under the
new startup design and should become a deprecated alias (do we have
that?) for something more fitting.

-- 
David Kastrup