Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!agate!helios.ee.lbl.gov!nosc!humu!uhccux!julian From: julian@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu (Julian Cowley) Newsgroups: comp.emacs Subject: Re: do-auto-save bug/feature Message-ID: <3319@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu> Date: 23 Feb 89 05:06:27 GMT References: <50852@yale-celray.yale.UUCP> <357@skipnyc.UUCP> <443@talos.UUCP> Organization: University of Hawaii at Manoa Lines: 40 In article <443@talos.UUCP> kjones@talos.UUCP (Kyle Jones) writes regarding the annoying "Buffer has shrunk; not saving it" message: >However, there are still problems. > >1) The rule works OK for large buffers but is too sensitive to changes in > buffers smaller than 3K. Replying to news or mail with included text > is a good example of this. >2) The rule can cause Emacs to refuse to auto-save a buffer that hasn't > been auto-saved at all. For example, the article I'm typing hasn't been > auto-saved at all because I used 'F' from rn and then killed most of the > included text before Emacs auto-saved. Even if Emacs get sent a fatal > signal, if the 10/13th's Rule says don't auto-save, it won't. >3) There ought to be a variable to turn this feature off. I suspect we'll > see this in v19. Surely having the auto-save code recognize a buffer > named "*mail*" is a transient thing. [I've already emailed a reply to Ashwin, but since there seems to be general interest, I'll post a reply, too.] Someone has already written a variable into Emacs to turn this feature off, and the patch was posted to gnu.emacs.bug a little more than a month ago. Unfortunately the article has already expired on this system and I never saved it, but I do have the author's address: . Hope- fully, version 19 will include this variable. However, one thing that is certain according to some email RMS sent me, is that version 19's behavior will definitely be different from the current: the message will turn auto-saving off in the buffer until the user explicitly asks for it to be turned on again. If the variable should exist in version 19, then (1) above could be taken care of with a buffer hook if not any other way. But (2) above seems to me to be a bug; perhaps you ought to send a bug report to gnu.emacs.bug (and at the same time put a plug in for the variable (3), too :-). julian@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu uunet!ucsd!nosc!uhccux!julian julian@uhccux.bitnet "People who aren't amused don't talk."