Re: Confused by y-or-n-p

[martin rudalics]

> The function y-or-n-p originally used to read only a small set of
> character commands.  In Emacs 27.1 we changed it to use
> read-from-minibuffer, which means users now can easily switch out of
> the minibuffer while the question they were asked is still not
> answered.

In the Elisp manual we say that

 ‘yes-or-no-p’ requires more work from the user than ‘y-or-n-p’ and
     is appropriate for more crucial decisions.

Now while 'yes-or-no-p' implements what is sometimes called a "modeless"
or "non-modal" dialogue, our original 'y-or-n-p' implemented a "modal"
dialogue where the user had no other choice but to answer the question
immediately, possibly performing a few buffer scrolls in between.

However, according to Wikipedia, modal dialogues are used

  "to command user awareness and to display emergency states"

inherently contradicting what we say above.  Maybe I'm the only one who
sees a contradiction here.  Still I'd suggest to allow users to
separately choose for both, 'y-or-n-p' _and_ 'yes-or-no-p' dialogues,
whether they want Emacs to handle them in a modal or non-modal way.

And while we're there we could also try to relieve some of our .emacs
files (mine included) of those

(defalias 'yes-or-no-p 'y-or-n-p)

by providing an option that accomplishes the necessary mapping.

Thanks, martin