Re: Gratuitous user interface change risks losing user work

[Nick Roberts]

 > I just got bit by this and I bet others will too. In previous versions of
 > Emacs C-x C-v (find-alternate-file) used to prompt you if you hadn't saved
 > the work in the current buffer and you used to have to press 'y' to discard
 > it.  *Now* it prompts you asking if you want to *save* your work. So if you
 > use it to revert the buffer to the last saved version -- something I do
 > quite frequently and have become accustomed to hitting 'y' quite quickly --
 > the default action is to *overwrite* your work!

For a new version of Emacs it would be a good idea to read carefully what Emacs
is asking you.  Previously people presumably lost work by indavertantly
discarding changes.  To help avoid unpleasant surprises I have documented this
change in NEWS.

 > This is awful. I just lost several days of work myself and I bet others will
 > come across this too. Randomly going around reversing the sense of questions
 > the user is asked is seriously disturbing.

Such changes are not made randomly but after consideration.

 > This is exacerbated by the documented regression in find-file to no longer
 > allow the shortcut of simply hitting return to reread the current file. So
 > now find-file doesn't work as expected and the obvious substitute C-x C-v
 > actively destroys the user's work.

The new behaviour provides consistency and AFAICS the old behaviour wasn't
documented.

Thanks fot the report.

-- 
Nick                                           http://www.inet.net.nz/~nickrob