Subject: Re: bug#6117: 24.0.50; dired-marked-face same as dired-flagged-face

From: Juri Linkov <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 10 Aug 2011 12:45:03 +0300

>> There's apparently a rampage going on where all faces are supposed to
>> inherit from the `font-lock-*' faces, so I think this would be frowned
>> upon.
>>
>> Does anybody have a suggestion taken from the `font-lock-*' corpus?
>
> I picket a font-lock face at random.

This is a dangerous change.  It increases the likelihood of deleting the
wrong files, because its default color is not distinctive and visible enough
to help preventing the wrong operation.

Moreover, depending on `font-lock-variable-name-face' with the hope
that users never customize `font-lock-*' faces is a wrong assumption.
After selecting a new color for variable names, the user later
will discover an unpleasant effect that it have on other
completely unrelated faces.

For instance, I customized `font-lock-variable-name-face' to "Blue1",
and now I have the same colors for Dired directories and files flagged
for deletion!

If it's absolutely necessary to distinguish between marked and flagged
files, then they should use colors closer to traditional, e.g.:

* for `dired-flagged' leave the old red face unchanged,
  just like `compilation-error';

* for `dired-marked' use the same face definition as for
  `compilation-warning'.  Its orange color is very close
   to `dired-flagged' but still distinctive.