Subject: Re: bug#2887: Suggestions for simple.el

From: Chong Yidong <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 07 Apr 2009 13:22:02 -0400

"Drew Adams" <[email-masked]> writes:

>> I think I will prefer to leave those unbound for now, waiting for more
>> generally useful commands, or more general agreement that they are
>> generally useful.
>
> So it sounds as if you're actually going to add these things to Emacs
> (even if you don't bind them by default)?
>
> If so, that's quite surprising, especially since the policy has always
> been _not_ to add functions simply because they _might_ be generally
> useful.

I don't think that's what Stefan was saying (but he can speak for
himself).  You're right, of course, that it's not a good idea to add
functions simply because they *might* be useful, especially since
simple.el is loaded by default.

I have not looked through bug#2887 in detail, but my impression is that
most of the suggested functions aren't quite suitable for default
inclusion in Emacs.  They are, however, Valuable Excercises For the
Novice Emacs Lisp coder.  Maybe someone should set up a page on
Emacswiki for this sort of thing.