bug#32581: 24.4; make recover-file a prompt instead of a warning

[Glenn Linderman]

On 7/13/2019 6:35 AM, Lars Ingebrigtsen wrote:

Glenn Linderman <v+python@g.nevcal.com> writes:

I think you understood correctly.  I'm not sure what version of which
Python-mode I have, but could probably figure it out somehow (I love emacs,
because it has extensions, but I'm not real good at writing or understanding
elisp: I use other people's extensions, mostly, and a bit of cut-n-paste
programming for a few more customizations).

Probably the following message, that I get every time I open the file.

"Warning: no abbrev-file found, customize `abbrev-file-name' in order to make
mode-specific abbrevs work."

Right.  Some modes are chatty at startup and hides warnings you're
interested in.

It's perfectly valid to not want to load an autosaved file, and making
Emacs prompt would be an inconvenience, in my opinion.

I agree that a prompt (a forced interaction) would not be appropriate.

Perhaps Emacs should treat auto-saved files a bit more like what it does
with files that have changed?  I.e., if you try to edit a file with an
auto-save file, it should prompt you something like "foo has auto save
data; really edit the buffer?" or something?

This is a very interesting idea. It is only when you go to edit that you would lose the auto-save file, so that would be a "last-chance" to retrieve your data, and you would be interacting with the file at that point anyway, so a forced interaction would be less intrusive than at load time.

Would that make sense?

That would certainly be safer than the current behavior, but would add the forced interaction.

My thought was more along the lines of some sort of message priority, where informational messages like the abbrev-file-name warning could not override a more important message... Of course, everyone thinks there message is most important, so that might be difficult to enforce or rank.

Another idea is that multiple messages could be displayed concurrently in an expanding echo area, and that none would vanish until the first user interaction. That way, when the user turns their attention to the emacs window again, all the messages from startup activities would be visible until the first keystroke or significant mouse operation (more than just a click) for the window occurs. This wouldn't require a forced interaction, and wouldn't require ranking message priorities, but would allow the user an opportunity to see all the startup messages. And it could generalize to non-startup situations: any occasion when macros or scripts are running and produce multiple messages without user interaction might want to grow the echo area to display them until there is another required user interaction.

Thanks for considering the possibility of enhancing something in this area, as it was a significant amount of work that was lost, and it could potentially happen again, and not just to me (I'm a little sensitized to the possibility now, others may not yet be).