Subject: bug#21746: 24.5; purpose of dired-keep-marker-copy?

From: Drew Adams <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 23 Oct 2015 14:57:35 -0700 (PDT)

> Thank you, indeed I was missing this piece of info.  I am just
> wondering: how often are you using this?  Is this a feature which
> should be exposed to all emacs beginners?  If yes, it needs to be
> documented better.

There is a lot in Dired that I think should be exposed/documented
better/more.  By default we don't even load dired-x.el or
dired-aux.el, and they provide lots of stuff useful even for
beginners, including lots of menus.

I would be in favor of our loading both of these Dired libraries
by default.  There is lots in Dired that users can benefit from,
but they are typically unaware of it.

(Also, we provide only rudimentary font-lock highlighting.)

> > Dunno how much of this is documented in the manual, but once you
> > look at `C-h m' and then its mention of `* c', you can pretty much
> > imagine how it can be put to good use.
> 
> Yes, you are probably right.  dired-change-marks bound to `* c'
> seems to be the command that needs to be advertised better in order
> to make these marks useful.  (In my every-day usage of dired,
> I still do not see actual benefits from this feature.)

Marking with `C' is still useful, even if you never do
anything with those marks.  It provides a clear indication
of the copied files.

You can always remove just the `C' marks (using `M-DEL',
aka `<M-backspace>'), if they get in your way.  Or remove
all marks (using `C-u M-DEL').  `M-DEL' is another key that
is not as well known as it should be, IMO.

All in all, we don't advertise much of what Dired has to offer.
(FWIW, Stefan made it clear that he never uses Dired.)