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

From: Mattias Engdegård <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 20 Sep 2020 19:33:25 +0200

19 sep. 2020 kl. 16.13 skrev Lars Ingebrigtsen <[email-masked]>:

> The movement commands Emacs has here are more complicated than most
> editors have, though.  Saying why `C-M-f' can't move seems like useful
> information for the user to receive.

Well, but is that true? There is no evidence for it. Emacs currently gives no useful information in such situations and never has ('scan-error' indeed). The previously posted patch can only improve matters.

Of course we can put in messages for the at-bounds cases; it would look something like the patch below. While it would still be an improvement over what Emacs currently does, it is still a statement that we value tradition over usability. Try both!

Another alternative would be the standard Emacs compromise: add a defcustom. Since it could control the message emission by other movement commands like backward-char and next-line, it's perhaps not a bad idea after all...

It wouldn't need to do anything about movement by word or sentence since they already seem to be fixed, good!