Re: What's your favourite *under_publicized* editing feature ofEmacs?

[Cthun]

On 23/02/2011 2:22 PM, Jason Earl wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 23 2011, Cthun wrote:
> > This runs into trouble if you do something drastic you later want to
> > undo.
>
> Actually, Emacs warns you before it makes drastic changes to an autosave
> file.  This at least gives you the opportunity to do something about it.

Oh, wonderful.

Do you know what I'd do if I was in the middle of typing some stuff into 
a text editor after just having deleted a bunch of stuff and then 
suddenly a box popped up saying something about autosaving and drastic 
changes and yadda yadda yadda but I didn't have time to read it before 
one of my enter keypresses (intended for the actual document I was 
typing into when the box interrupted me) triggers one of the dialog's 
buttons (which?) and it disappears again (and does who knows what to my 
hard drive?).

I'd delete that editor and go get a new one, that's what. :)

> The solution, of course, is to manually save *before* the fork.

Yes, but the reality is that people will sometimes forget to do so, or 
in that order.

> I real life I don't think that this is much of a problem, especially
> with Emacs which has infinite undo

Infinite undo? On what planet? When I experimented with it, back in 
college, I found the undo to just toggle undo/redo like Windows 
Notepad's. (I ended up experimenting also with LSD and mescaline and 
decided on none of the above.)

> What's more, Emacs is flexible enough that you can easily set up
> whatever sort of auto-save functionality that you think you want.

If you're a computer programmer with time to spare reprogramming the 
editor instead of actually doing your job, perhaps.

> Emacs can do that.  It has an auto-save-hook that you can add code to

and ten million ways to subtly or drastically-but-irrecoverably fuck 
things up if you make some subtle mistake doing so, no doubt.

Thanks, but no thanks.

> Another alternative, of course, is to simply save the file whenever you
> feel you have something worth saving.

Well, there you go, then. That's exactly what I was originally 
advocating! So, you've come around to agreeing with me at last.

Ah, progress ...

> > Sequences of numbered files used to risk filling up the filesystem,
> > too, but not with text files in this day and age.
>
> On the bright side Emacs can be made to do whatever makes you the
> happiest.

Can it be made to cut itself, scream like a thing tortured, and then die? ;)

> Very few other programs have anywhere near that sort of flexibility.

If I want that much flexibility I'll look at that Russian mail-order 
catalog. There *is* something to be said for structure and stability in 
fundamental, daily-use tools. And standards-adherence.

> For most folks, however, the defaults are what they want.

Wait a minute. I thought you just said that the Emacs defaults are what 
most people want. But that's clearly impossible, so I can only presume 
that your post got garbled in transit. Care to repost whatever you'd 
said at this point?