Subject: bug#1092: compilation-goto-error goes to wrong location when buffer has hidden regions

From: Stefan Monnier <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 03 Jan 2016 11:06:19 -0500

>> There are several problems with selective-display:
>> - first and foremost, the variable provides 2 different features:
>> - when set to t, it makes CR behave specially (it's a special
>> line-separator that makes the next line invisible).
>> - when set to a number, it makes all lines indented deeper than this
>> number invisible.
> Why is that a problem?

It's not a problem in itself, no.  But it means that if you want to
obsolete only one of the two uses, you can't just mark the variable
as obsolete.

> I wish every rarely used display feature was so lightweight as
> selective-display.

It's not lightweight on the Elisp side where you need to add a lot of
extra code in ever more places to handle the special meaning of \r in
that rare case.

> Anyway, I don't see how this report of a minor bug should trigger such
> far-reaching conclusions.  It took me all of 5 minutes to fix it; we
> should have done this 7 years ago.  I'm sorry we didn't, but better
> late than never.

I think the fix is worse than the problem, personally.

        Stefan