Re: Thinking about changed buffers

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen <address@hidden>
> Cc: address@hidden,  address@hidden
> Date: Mon, 28 Mar 2016 22:21:36 +0200
> 
>   /* Here we have a problem.  SAVE_MODIFF is used here to encode
>      buffer-modified-p (as SAVE_MODIFF<MODIFF) as well as
>      recent-auto-save-p (as SAVE_MODIFF<auto_save_modified).  So if we
>      modify SAVE_MODIFF to affect one, we may affect the other
>      as well.
>      E.g. if FLAG is nil we need to set SAVE_MODIFF to MODIFF, but
>      if SAVE_MODIFF<auto_save_modified that means we risk changing
>      recent-auto-save-p from t to nil.
>      Vice versa, if FLAG is non-nil and SAVE_MODIFF>=auto_save_modified
>      we risk changing recent-auto-save-p from nil to t.  */
>   SAVE_MODIFF = (NILP (flag)
>                /* FIXME: This unavoidably sets recent-auto-save-p to nil.  */
>                ? MODIFF
>                /* Let's try to preserve recent-auto-save-p.  */
>                : SAVE_MODIFF < MODIFF ? SAVE_MODIFF
>                /* If SAVE_MODIFF == auto_save_modified == MODIFF,
>                   we can either decrease SAVE_MODIFF and auto_save_modified
>                   or increase MODIFF.  */
>                : MODIFF++);
> 
> :-)
> 
> I think instead of all this, we could just introduce a new field in the
> buffer struct...  er...  explicit_modified_flag_p.  Calling
> `(set-buffer-modified-p t)' would just set that, and `buffer-modified-p'
> would just return that.
> 
> (`(set-buffer-modified-p nil)' would clear it, of course, in addition to
> doing everything else it's doing.)
> 
> So then we're back to just hashing the buffer contents and (some) text
> properties, I think?

If you do that, you'll need to modify all the places that look at
MODIFF, SAVE_MODIFF, and their buffer-specific variants.  In
particular, the display engine.