Subject: bug#23426: 25.0.93; dired-do-find-regexp doesn't find newline

From: Drew Adams <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 4 May 2016 13:09:06 -0700 (PDT)

> I think all of this is happening in an attempt to re-establish consistency
> among usage patterns, keybindings, and other features, so that the old tag
> lookup functionality can be entirely replaced by the new xref
> functionality.
> 
> Could it all have happened differently? Sure; but as Eli and Dmitry have
> said, that ship has sailed. It happened under a different maintainer,
> and so now we have to accept what it is and work toward the best solution 
> using this technology. It's that, or rip it all out altogether, which
> Eli assures me would be an unfortunate loss of time, energy, and some
> very nice improvements.

It's not clear to me why you are saying this.  I certainly have not
requested any ripping out of anything - altogether or otherwise.  I
have not said anything negative about this technology - no complaints.

I asked only that `A' and `Q' be left bound to their commands (which
are still available).  As I said, if those bindings were not being
co-opted immediately then I would have had nothing to say here.

I've heard no reason why different bindings, instead, are not given
to the new search and search-and-replace features, at least as long
as the original commands are supported.  No reason, that is, beyond
the statement that the ultimate aim is to replace the older commands.

And even if `A' and `Q' were to be co-opted, if the new commands
worked for all users of the old, I would no doubt have said nothing.

I spoke up here when I guessed that some users of `A' and `Q' today
would be unable to use them tomorrow, without installing some
non-Emacs software.  I spoke up to ask whether my guess was correct
(yes).  And apparently I was not the only one to whom this was news.

If the older commands are to be replaced, and not just supplemented,
by the new ones, then I do think this is a step backward for someone
who does not have `grep' or `find' (I have both, so this is not a
problem for me personally).  That's my opinion, and it does not
imply or call for ripping out anything.

If the older commands are kept available and the new commands are
given different key bindings, I see no problem at all.

I have nothing against the addition of commands that use `grep' and
`find' and show you all search hits.  Quite the contrary.  As I said
clearly, I _welcome_ such an approach.  To which explicit welcome
the response was a sarcastic "That's very generous of you."

Is it possible to welcome the new commands but point out disagreement
with their being assigned the keys `A' and `Q'?

If this is all about "an attempt to re-establish consistency among
usage patterns, keybindings, and other features" then I do not see
the imperative of assigning `A' and `Q' immediately to these new
search commands.