Subject: bug#20891: emacs: Back off if .doc is not an Office document

From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 24 Jun 2015 14:19:18 +0300

Package: emacs
Severity: normal
Version: 24.4+1-4ubuntu5
X-Debbugs-Cc: [email-masked]

(I am forwarding the following bug from the Ubuntu Launchpad bug
tracking system.  The original report contains some upset lanuage; the
boiled-down summary at the top is mine.)

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/emacs24/+bug/1466139

It is not uncommon for *.doc files to contain plain ASCII text. In this
case, the default behavior of Emacs is less than ideal, as described in
more detail in the problem report below. Perhaps the .doc file name
mapping should contain some additional heuristics, and fall back to
plain text if the file is not an Office document.

Original problem description follows.

-----

Today I downloaded the sources of secure delete. Inspected some files
with vi and some with Emacs 24. Did what I wanted to do, started to
listen to my favourite internet radio station, wanted to cite on
Facebook a citation from the secure delete docs.

I wanted to open the file "secure_delete.doc" (a pure ASCII text file)
in Emacs 24 and: "Whenever you see this buffer I'm going to make a
picture of it and you won't be able to edit anything." Haha, no this
really reminds me of the monkey face during the Ubuntu installation. But
don't make a monkey out of me because Emacs 24 is going to be replaced
with svi an extensible text base line editor yet to be written.

Emacs' open file is broken:
 - whenever it sees a file with the extension or post fix ".doc" it
 treats it like a Office document.
 - it takes an image of it
 - and shows you the image - which for a pure text file shows you the
 contents of the file as an image in that gone editor

They should use the /file/ utility to check for the file type - but
showing an unmutable picture of pure text is like making a monkey out of
the user.

-- 
If this were a real .signature, it would suck less.  Well, maybe not.