Re: Introducing thread-safe Tramp

[Yuri Khan]

On Sat, Jul 28, 2018 at 2:43 AM Michael Albinus <address@hidden> wrote:

> > What feedback is given to the user after the asynchronous find command
> > is issued and before the user sees the file content and can edit it?
>
> Nothing yet. Open point.
>
> What do you propose?

Basically, do what a web browser does when a slow-loading URL is
opened in a new tab.

Create a buffer and display it immediately, either empty or with some
placeholder text, to make it clear to the user that the command was
accepted but content is not final. Replace with actual content when it
is loaded or as it is being loaded.

While the file is being loaded, the user can close the window in which
it would be displayed, or display another buffer in that window, so
that the buffer is not visible when it finishes loading. It might be
useful to give a subtle indication that the asynchronous command
finished, maybe by displaying a message in the echo area. (Browsers do
that by animating a loader icon on the tab and stopping that when
loaded, but Emacs does not by default have a tab bar.)

Also, while the file is being loaded, the user can kill the target
buffer. Ideally that would cancel the asynchronous loading operation,
but acceptable behavior would be to silently abandon the content when
it finishes loading.

Bonus points if buffers that are being loaded asynchronously are
visible as such in Ibuffer.