Re: Proposal: move write-contents-functions higher up in basic-save-buffer

[Eric Abrahamsen]

Eric Abrahamsen <address@hidden> writes:

> Most special-mode buffers aren't visiting a file, and thus they miss out
> on all the `do-auto-save' and `save-some-buffers' mechanisms. I'd guess
> a fair number of packages that use special-mode *do* have some concept
> of saving, or persisting data in some other way.
>
> I think the `write-contents-functions' hook would be an ideal way of
> solving this problem, except that the way `basic-save-buffer' is
> written, it won't let you get that far without having a file name.
>
> My proposal is to declare `write-contents-functions' as *explicitly* a
> hook for buffers that don't have any file associated with them at all
> (this would be in contrast to `write-file-functions'). Then we'd move it
> up higher in the process: either earlier in `basic-save-buffer', or all
> the way up to `save-buffer' -- that way `basic-save-buffer' could only
> be for buffers that have a file.
>
> Then `save-some-buffers' could check for the buffer-local presence of
> this variable, and do the save. `do-auto-save' would behave the same.
> "s" could be bound to `save-buffer' by default in special-mode.

I forgot to say, auto-save would obviously be more difficult, since
you'd have to handle the file name and location for the auto save file.
I think it would be worth coming up with a solution, though.