Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!uunet!bu-cs!bloom-beacon!bionet!rutgers!labrea!agate!helios.ee.lbl.gov!nosc!humu!uhccux!julian
From: julian@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu (Julian Cowley)
Newsgroups: gnu.emacs.bug
Subject: Re: [mcvax!diku.dk!seindal@uunet.uu.net: A minor patch to emacs]
Message-ID: <2985@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu>
Date: 11 Jan 89 09:46:10 GMT
References: <8901100150.AA02627@wheat-chex.ai.mit.edu>
Distribution: gnu
Organization: University of Hawaii at Manoa
Lines: 32

In article <8901100150.AA02627@wheat-chex.ai.mit.edu> mcvax!diku.dk!seindal@uunet.uu.net writes:
>All these silly messages about "buffer has shrunk a lot; not auto-saving" has
>been annoying me a lot, so I made this little change to fileio.c, so the
>messages are controlled by a lisp variable.  If auto-save-no-complaints is set
>to non-nil, buffers will be auto-saved no matter how much they have shrunk.

The message is annoying, I agree, but it does serve a purpose.
Its main function is to guard against auto-saving an
unintentionally large kill, in case the system crashes before
the change can be corrected.  I like having that extra
insurance.

However, in more cases than not, the change *is* intentional,
and results in Emacs failing to auto-save legitmate changes.
There has to be some way to tell Emacs that that is what is
wanted.  Having a Lisp variable control whether the feature is
on or off is not enough -- I would rather just tell Emacs to
turn auto-saving back on each time it gives me the message (I am
not debating the usefulness of the Lisp variable, but rather
Emacs behaviour without it).  To my mind, toggling auto-save
ought to work, but it doesn't; the only way that I know of is to
fully save the whole buffer to disk, and this may not be totally
desirable, either.

I propose that the message be changed to read something like:
"Buffer has shrunk a lot; not auto-saving.  M-x auto-save to
resume."

julian@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu
uunet!ucsd!nosc!uhccux!julian
julian@uhccux.bitnet
"People who aren't amused don't talk."