Subject: bug#16015: 24.3.50; newline indents in shell script mode

From: Jarek Czekalski <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 01 Dec 2013 09:24:25 +0100

Let me be a standard user first. I fire the "newline" command, not 
"newline-and-indent". The default -Q behaviour should do what is written 
in the documentation of the product. Now it is not. This is a bug.

Now a longer background, I wished I didn't have to write it.

I know long discussions about "Default behaviour of RET." and 
"electric-indent-mode: abolition of `newline' function is not the Right 
Thing.". Their outcome was as follows:
1. The author of the change wanted to make programming modes indent on 
RET by default
2. They did it in a wrong way

Nobody argues with 1. Many people have objections about removing the 
functionality of the "newline" command, that is point 2. I also didn't 
object until I found out, that you did it by default. Please do the 
change in an acceptable way. There were many suggestions how to make RET 
indent without achieving unreasonable documentation contradiction.

The least acceptable fix IMO is placing the following string in the 
docs, presumably at the beginning:

"newline is a deprecated command and now it is an alias of 
newline-and-indent in programming modes. If you want the old newline 
behaviour please use ... instead."

The other acceptable way (still not very good) is to introduce a new 
function newline-without-indent, because then it's easy to place it in 
the docs (the first suggestion) and find by a user through C-h f newline.

A good solution may be found in the threads I mentioned. One of them 
suggested by Richard Stallman:
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2013-10/msg00701.html
Supported by Stephen J. Turnbull
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2013-10/msg00732.html
And here is the summary of the discussion which is what I described in 
points 1 and 2, by Josh:
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2013-10/msg00724.html
And everybody knows that the strongest opposer to the new change was the 
author of the thread, Alan Mackenzie. But I always prefer to show that 
the author was not the only believer.

Seems like you ignore these people's opinions, but at least you should 
not ignore this bug report. The first paragraph proves that this is a 
bug. Are you able to deny it?

Jarek