Subject: bug#25905: 25.1; Can't find regexp and replace in SVG files

From: Lars Ingebrigtsen <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 12 Dec 2020 20:56:55 +0100

Matthias Meulien <[email-masked]> writes:

> Open a dired buffer visiting a directory with SVG images. Mark some SVG
> files then try to `dired-do-find-regexp-and-replace' in those files.
>
> It fails due to `image-file-mode' turning all visited buffers as
> read-only...

(I'm going through old bug reports that unfortunately got no response at
the time.)

It'll also display the svg files as images (although with the real text
in the buffer "shadowed" by the image).

I guess this is a problem with all files that Emacs displays in
... highly interpreted form, like images and tar files and the like.
The thing that makes SVG files special here is that you could see
somebody actually want to do a find-and-replace on them, while you don't
really see that in a, say, zip file.  Often.

But I wonder whether this problem should nevertheless have a general
solution.  That is, should this command have a variation that works on
literal files instead?  Perhaps a prefix of `C-u' to make the query
replace use find-file-literally?

Any opinions?

-- 
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
   bloggy blog: http://lars.ingebrigtsen.no