Re: 23.0.50; Middle w in of permissions in dired-mode is red and bold: dired-warning

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Cc: address@hidden
> From: Juri Linkov <address@hidden>
> Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2007 00:21:01 +0300
> 
> I don't understand the need of adding a new face `dired-warn-writable'?

To get me off the hook with people who use dired-warning-face.

I don't mind removing dired-warning-face, but its doc string is quite
general:

  "Face used to highlight a part of a buffer that needs user attention."

which to me means it could be used for something other than mode
bits.  "Perhaps someone customized dired-font-lock-keywords," says I,
in which case leaving that face alone won't do any particular harm.

> It adds another unnecessary face, and still doesn't fix a problem
> of the annoying bold red indication of group and world writable permissions.

It does fix that on platforms where group- and world-writable files
are the default.  On other platforms, you can customize it, or we can
make it inherit from `default' on _all_ platforms.  I didn't do it
because I was unsure how many users of Unix and GNU systems actually
want to pay attention to such files.

> If no one finds this indication useful

Obviously, someone did, as this face is with us since 2004.  And
Richard's comment there indicates that someone tried to highlight the
entire file name around 1997.

> Otherwise, we could revert the `dired-warning' face to less annoying
> colors

As long as the face's name is *-warning, I think making it inherit
from font-lock-warning-face is TRT: if we want to warn about
something, let that something stand out like any other warning.

That is why I renamed the face to something less general.  And if the
"warn" part isn't consistent enough with what I say above, it (the
"warn" part of the face's name) can go away.

> and maybe turn this face off by default on Windows (is this
> possible to do with a face condition?)

AFAIK, not really; you can only condition that on the value of
window-system.