Re: Adding refactoring capabilities to Emacs

[Alfred M. Szmidt]

I can sorta see where Dimitry is coming from.

You, and I at least, consider diffs "files" -- so we prefer to keep
them as you'd normally C-x C-f on then. 

But consider RMAIL, RMAIL handles the file specially to keep whatever
internal structure sane.  So the only way to edit is to use whatever
mode bindings you have at your fingers.  

The major difference here is that if you C-x C-f a RMAIL file, you get
the file (if I remeber correct, this might be a regression from when
the format was changed, since I do recall that BABYL files had a mode
line and the file would open up in RMAIL mode?).  WHere as with diff,
if you name the file .diff or .patch or whatever, you get diff-mode
like you'd get c-mode or similar.

To open a RMAIL file in RMAIL mode you need M-x rmail, which puts the
burden on the user to decide what they want to do (break the rules of
the format or use the dedicated mode).


Now .. I don't personally favor this, and it seems that there is a
simple switch to make diff files read-only anyway, so maybe leave it
at that?