Re: On the new startup and scratch buffer

[Jonathan Rockway]

* On Wed, Feb 13 2008, Angelo Graziosi wrote:
> Today, after a bootstrap of fresh CVS, I observe that the startup
> buffer is not loaded any more and the scratch buffer is *completely*
> empty.
>
>
> Usually the scratch buffer contains (in red) this sentence:
>
> ============================================================
> ;; This buffer is for notes you don't want to save, and for Lisp evaluation.
> ;; If you want to create a file, visit that file with C-x C-f,
> ;; then enter the text in that file's own buffer.
> ============================================================
>
> Is this the correct behaviour?
>
> The behaviour of the startup screen is confirmed by this
>
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
> lisp/ChangeLog
> [...]
>           * desktop.el (after-init-hook): Set inhibit-startup-screen to
>             t after reading the desktop.
> -----------------------------------------------------------------

According to the docstring on `initial-scratch-message':

   "Initial message displayed in *scratch* buffer at startup.
    If this is nil, no message will be displayed.
    If `inhibit-startup-screen' is non-nil, then no message is displayed,
    regardless of the value of this variable."

So it looks like this is expected, although annoying.  This just looks
like a side effect of having this block:

      (and initial-scratch-message
           (get-buffer "*scratch*")
           (with-current-buffer "*scratch*"
             (when (zerop (buffer-size))
               (insert initial-scratch-message)
               (set-buffer-modified-p nil))))

On the "else" side of the (if (or ... inhibit-startup-screen ...) ...)
statement.

If people are interested in a change to this behavior (always add text
to *scratch* if initial-scratch-message isn't nil), I'll supply a patch.

Regards,
Jonathan Rockway