Subject: Re: bug#52569: 29.0.50; Wishlist: There should be a way for packages to handle files without reading them in first

From: Richard Stallman <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 22 Dec 2021 22:43:20 -0500

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  > >> non-persistent-file-mode, or transient-file-mode, or ephemeral-mode...
  > >
  > > Hm...  if `view-mode' wasn't taken already, perhaps that would have been
  > > an option.

  > Here are some additional ideas:

  >     special-display-mode
  >     special-file-mode
  >     no-load-mode
  >     no-visit-mode    [if it won't be visiting]

If it is useful to have a parent mode for modes that imitate visiting
a file without really doing so with the normal Emacs visit and save
mechanism, I suggest virtual-visit-mode.

But I suspect this will not prove useful, since we don't have
multiple inheritance for major modes.  I tend to think most of
these modes will turn out to have other things as parent modes.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman (https://stallman.org)
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)