Re: ispell/hunspell/Windows: a fully-worked example

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: David Masterson <dsmasterson@gmail.com>
> Date: Fri, 04 Apr 2014 23:59:33 -0700
> 
> Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:
> 
> > Emacs never searches for things "in the current directory", it always
> > fully resolves file names relative to the current buffer's value of
> > default-directory, before passing them to system-call APIs.  The
> > "Start in" directory set by the desktop shortcut only affects the
> > *scratch* buffer; every other buffer will have some other directory as
> > its default one.  E.g., buffers that visit files have that file's
> > directory as their default-directory.
> >
> > So I wonder whether you could show a real-life case where this problem
> > is indeed at work.  I think such cases don't really exist, except when
> > you evaluate expressions in *scratch*.
> 
> The OP is using the typical use-case.  Emacs will indeed start with the
> default-directory set to the value of "Start In" for the Windows icon.
> Any buffer created will inherit this value and, then, may set a new
> value.

Correction: (almost) all buffers set a new value for
default-directory.  It is not easy to find buffers that don't, if they
at all exist.

> Therefore, the real-life case is that, if you go into dired, you
> may not be in what you were expecting...

Dired asks for the directory to edit.  If you go to Dired from
*scratch*, and if you accept the default without changing it, you will
indeed get the listing of the directory where Emacs started.  But I
fail to see how this is related to the OP, whose problem was to find
the correct speller on PATH.  And even in the above case, the
directory where you run Dired is explicitly shown in the prompt, so
the user should see it and understand what she is doing.

> The answer to the OP is to set the "Start In" property of the Windows
> icon for Emacs to something that will always be appropriate (like the
> Documents directory in your \Users directory).

And my answer to the OP is that the value of "Start in" hardly
matters, although setting to something other than the directory of
another Emacs version definitely cannot do any harm.