Juri Linkov <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > Stefan Monnier <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: >>> There is already "Automatic File De/compression" menu item >>> for auto-compression-mode in the Options menu, but no menu item >>> for auto-image-file-mode. This looks like an unintentional omission. >> >> I think it's omitted because it's a very rarely used feature. > > Indeed, auto-image-file-mode is useful only for viewing images. > OTOH, editing image files as plain text in Emacs is a rare > operation too. And even with auto-image-file-mode set to t, > editing is possible after visiting them with find-file-literally. > With all this said, I have a question: is there any reason not > to turn auto-image-file-mode on by default?
If you are working through a slow X connection, accidentally visiting an image file could be a very expensive mistake. In the past, displaying an image that was overtall could really confuse Emacs. This has become much better recently, but I don't know how the situation is with overwide images. Anyway, there are ASCII-based image file formats like ASCII PBM, PGM, PPM, PAM and XBM and XPM. Much more often than not, when I open such files with Emacs, I really don't want to see the picture, but the source text (to see comments, assignment of colors and palette, ranges and so on). And using find-file-literally (even if we provided it in the menus, where it currently isn't) does not cater overly gracefully for the line endings in those files. > I would like to ask the same question for auto-compression-mode too. > What is the reason not to turn it on by default? How often people > visit compressed files for editing without uncompressing? I don't know how well auto-compression-mode deals with things like missing compression commands. If it fails gracefully, enabling it by default should not do much harm. -- David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum _______________________________________________ Emacs-devel mailing list Emacs-devel@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/emacs-devel