Subject: bug#43489: [PATCH] Don't signal scan-error when moving by sexp interactively

From: Lars Ingebrigtsen <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 18 Sep 2020 17:23:10 +0200

Mattias Engdegård <[email-masked]> writes:

> In fact, several of the commands in question don't even beep at the
> boundaries in some cases: for example, C-M-f after the last sexp of
> the buffer jumps to end-of-buffer and silently stays there. Should we
> add noise messages for such cases? Surely not.

Yeah, that is pretty inconsistent.

> In other words: I'm not strongly against messages instead of dings if
> that is the condition for applying the patch, but would like to hear
> the benefit of those messages argued positively.

Emacs does signal errors a lot more in editing than other editors, it's
true -- for instance, `left' at the beginning of the buffer.

> There, I'm better now. And here's a hot cuppa, lovely.

:-)

>> I wonder whether this would have any negative effect when people are
>> using these commands in keyboard macros.  For instance, if you've
>> recorded a macro that does `M-C-f M-DEL' or something, previously it
>> would signal an error and then stop, while now it'll just continue and
>> delete the wrong thing?
>
> Actually, (ding) interrupts keyboard macros, so this does work.

Ah, I'd forgotten that.

Still, I'm not sure whether a (ding) is more helpful than a non-cryptic
user-error message in these instances.

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