Re: ielm working buffer on the modeline

[Juanma Barranquero]

> I don't see why that kind of buffer is more strange that against
> any other type of buffer.

Well, its not usual for me to test elisp against a mail buffer, but
you're right, the usage pattern is obvioulsy very subjective.

> What I don't understad (but maybe you can enlighten me) is why running
> ielm _on_ test.el is necessary when _developing_ test.el ?  What are
> the advantages of doing that?

That depends, I supose, on the way you usually work. I like to minimize
buffer switching and number of windows. Yesterday I was trying (once
again) to develop a jit-lock based lazy line-numbering module, and I
tested changes against the source file in order not to have to switch
back and forth between buffers. Line-numbering is usually non-destructive
wrt the target buffer :)

> And I don't see what buffer-local settings of test.el are interesting
> when developing test.el  (unless you are looking into a problem with
> Emacs-Lisp mode).

Perhaps I do that kind of thing often. Before that I developed a
derivative of elisp-mode intended to edit my own .emacs file :)

> What about changing the buffer name rather than the mode-line-process, ie.

<snip>

> At least, that would display the information in the part of the mode line
> where (potentially long) names are already shown.

Ok, I think that's a good idea, but it requires more code, because

ELISP> (setq mode-name '("IELM on " (:eval (buffer-name ielm-working-buffer))))
*** Eval error ***  error: "Only strings should be stored in the buffer-local 
variable mode-name"


                                                           /L/e/k/t/u