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Date: Thu, 19 Dec 1996 15:48:32 +0100
To: xemacs-beta@xemacs.org
From: jan@tk.uni-linz.ac.at (Jan Borchers)
Subject: Re: 19.15 b4 success and beef

I definitely vote for the alternate proposal, setting require-final-newline
to 'ask. That way, newbies are told what the system is doing to their
files, so no surprises with changed file lengths, etc. Serious hackers can
say "no" when editing their favorite binary files.

Finally, I have set this variable to 'ask myself, and I have stopped
counting how often this saved *my* butt when editing makefiles etc. where
lines not ending with newline are simply ignored.

A 't setting, however, would make XEmacs an editor that changes files in
miraculous ways without my knowing or wanting it, and I *hate* such tools
just as I hate Microsoft's Installers that put crap everywhere on your hard
drive without telling you or giving you any choice...

Jan


From Ben Wing <wing@best.com>:

>require-final-newline should *NOT* default to t.  Principle of least
>surprise, likesay ...
>
>Anyone know to tell pine to use your own custom sendmail program?
>
>On 18 Dec 1996, Steven L Baur wrote:
>
>> >>>>> "Martin" == Martin Buchholz <mrb@eng.sun.com> writes:
>> >>>>> "Pez" == Peter Pezaris <pez@dwwc.com> writes:
>>
>> Pez> I would vote for changing it.  I would also vote for
>> Pez> including a EOF delimiter by default.
>>
>> Martin> Referring to the value of require-final-newline, right?
>>
>> I thought he meant a tag like the ``[END]'' in VAX Editors.
>>
>> Martin> I think require-final-newline should default to something
>> Martin> other than nil.  Very few people edit files which require the
>> Martin> final newline to be MISSING.
>>
>> But when they need it missing, they *really* need it missing.  I've
>> lost track of the number of times Emacs has saved my butt due to its
>> ability to edit binary files.
>>
>> Martin> Most object code files are not damaged by having a trailing
>> Martin> newline added at the end, so even if you're in the habit of
>> Martin> editing binary executables directly, nothing should go wrong.
>>
>> Martin> It *is* true that there is a slight chance of user
>> Martin> astonishment, if the user does an ls -l before and after
>> Martin> editing, and compares file sizes (I've done this).
>>
>> Martin> Proposal:
>>
>> Martin> require-final-newline should default to t.
>>
>> Martin> (The folks I support have run this way for years)
>>
>> Martin> Alternate proposal:
>>
>> Martin> require-final-newline should default to 'ask.
>>
>> I prefer the alternate proposal of the two, but I've never had a
>> problem with how Emacs deals with this.
>> --
>> steve@miranova.com baur
>> Unsolicited commercial e-mail will be billed at $250/message.
>> "That Bill Clinton.  He probably doesn't know how to log on to the
>> Internet."  -- Rush Limbaugh, noted Computer Expert
>>

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jan O. Borchers      Telecooperation Group       Office: TNF Tower, Room 955
Dipl.-Inform.        Inst. of Computer Science    Phone: +43-732-2468-9888
Research Assistant   University of Linz             Fax: +43-732-2468-10
                     Altenberger Str. 69          Email: jan@tk.uni-linz.ac.at
                     4040 Linz, AUSTRIA     http://www.tk.uni-linz.ac.at/~jan/

Visiting Scientist at:       Distributed Systems Department, University of Ulm
                             89069 Ulm, GERMANY        Phone: +49-731-502-4235
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