bug#20992: 25.0.50; `virtual-dired': (1) doc typo, (2) unclear

[Michael Heerdegen]

Drew Adams <drew.adams@oracle.com> writes:

> 4. It's not clear from the doc just how `virtual-dired' changes
> Dired mode.  It doesn't seem particularly "virtual", but it's not
> clear what is meant by that word here.
>
> Seems that this is in fact just Dired mode, and that it is the
> opposite of a virtual Dired mode: it puts an ordinary `ls'
> listing into Dired mode, no?

More or less yes, I guess.  My impression after reading the available
docs, and when trying to use it, is that the purpose is to get a dired
like listing from somewhere else, e.g. an external source, or from a
saved file (e.g. a dired buffer from a later Emacs session saved to a
file) into a dired-like mode to have access to some of its commands.  It
is virtual in the sense that the contents do not necessarily need to
reflect the contents of an existing directory.  This is only checked if
you switch to the real dired mode.  A better wording might have been
"offline" dired mode or so.

If saving dired buffers is indeed one of the purposes, this case would
also need some fine tuning: when opening the saved file, it is currently
just in fundamental-mode.  And after switching to virtual-dired the
buffer is immediately marked as modified and you need to save or discard
changes when you want to kill the buffer although you didn't change
anything at all.

Michael.