Should compare-windows do (ding t)

[Richard Stallman]

What do people think about this question?


To: "Richard M. Stallman" <address@hidden>
Started-at: 2006.08.04-15:45:50
From: Whitfield Diffie <address@hidden>
Date: Fri,  4 Aug 2006 15:56:58 -0700
Subject: Ding in compare windows
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                                Friday  04 August 2006  at 15:45

> I will implement the use of two different skip functions.  Using (ding t)
> is a separate question; that might be an improvement but I am not quite
> sure what is right here.

    I don't know the reason for wanting to have a compare windows failure
--- it isn't even exactly a failure it is just that the windows differ
immediately and usually results from not moving the cursor in one window
or the other before calling compare windows again --- but perhaps there is
one I haven't thought of.  The reason I find it awkward is that I find
myself defining keyboard macros that compare windows and two things are
annoying.

    Consider the following not very inspired macro:

 (define-kbd-macro 'compare-then-recenter               ;; name
   "xcompa
oo"                         ;; code
   "xcompa<ctrl-M><ctrl-L><ctrl-X>o<ctrl-L><ctrl-X>o" ;; readable code
   "   Compare-windows then recenter each.")            ;; comment

if a ding exists from the macro during compare-windows, the
recentering doesn't get done.  I believe I have had more interesting
cases but I can't recall them.

    I often use compare-windows (in a macro) when debug-on-error is true.
In this case, the ding pops us an error window.  I suppose this is
something that could be handled with debug-ignored-errors but it doesn't
seem that it is really an error, so why whould we want it exciting the
error handler.

    Using (ding t) solves both problems.

                                        Whit