Re: messages override minibuffer input

[Roland Winkler]

On Sat Sep 8 2007 Richard Stallman wrote:
>     I am always annoyed when emacs is waiting for input in the
>     minibuffer, and in the meanwhile an (idle-) timer function kicks in,
>     producing a message that overrides the content displayed in the
>     minibuffer.
> 
> Which are the packages and messages that actually annoy you in this
> way?  Maybe those packages should be changed, or silenced.

I apologize the delayed reply. I had to do some more digging in the
code to understand more precisley what annoys me:

I have some timer functions that use autoloaded functions. A simple
test case is

(defun foo () (regexp-opt '("bar" "baz")))
(run-at-time 3 nil 'foo)

This will create a message "Loading regexp-opt...done" if regexp-opt
was not yet loaded. This message can override the content displayed
in the minibuffer.

If I understand the code correctly, the function do_autoload in
eval.c normally calls load with arg NOMESSAGE being nil. So load
issues a message. Would it make sense that load used something like
optional-message?

Roland