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

From: "Roland Winkler" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 23 Oct 2015 20:20:23 -0500

On Fri Oct 23 2015 Drew Adams wrote:
> 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.

There is a big difference between exposing and documenting more
features from dired.  I immediately agree on better documentation of
dired features.  But I am not sure it will make new emacs users
happy when they get overwhelmed by features they do not understand.
Advanced users, on the other hand, know how to read the manuals and
then get the customization they want.

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

That's exactly why these C's are irritating and inconsistent: the
properly documented marks `*' and `D' serve the purpose of
indicating that an action _will be_ performed on certain files.  The
C's indicate that an action _has been_ performed and they get into
the way when you are using the other marks.

Say, before marking files for some new action I type `g'
(revert-buffer).  If this gives me an unmodified buffer, there are
no left-over marks floating around that I have overlooked.  The C's
are just in the way for how marks are used otherwise.

Roland