Subject: RE: bug#7291: 24.0.50; `non-essential' is incomprehensible

From: "Drew Adams" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 30 Oct 2010 13:05:46 -0700

> > do-not-disturb | no-molestar | ne-pas-deranger |
> > nao-perturbe | non-disturbare 
>
> I insist in being informed in German. "Bitte nicht stören". 
> Otherwise, I do whatever I want to do.

;-)

> > (defvar do-not-disturb nil
> >   "Non-nil is a sign to avoid disturbing the user.
> > Code that performs a relatively unimportant action that might
> > disturb the user can check this variable and choose not to act
> > when it is non-nil.
> 
> It is not about "disturbing". If non-essential^W^W do-not-disturb is
> non-nil, Tramp does not open a remote connection. That's all 
> until now, and that's the reason I have asked for this kind of variable.

I understand.  And in practice, today, objectively, this is used only by Tramp
(bound by Ido and Icomplete, handled by Tramp).

But Stefan has been clear that he wants this to be something more general: not
necessarily about Tramp, not necessarily about remote connection, not
necessarily about password-prompting, not necessarily about interrupting the
user,...

He wants this to be something so general that its intention is recorded only in
terms of "disturbing the user".  That's his point, not mine.  I just tried to
follow up with a name and description that supports that intention.

To reflect what you say and just the current situation, the name would instead
speak about Tramp not accessing remote files, not opening a remote connection,
not prompting for a password, or some such.

But that is not Stefan's intention for this variable, AFAICT.

Whatever gets done about this bug (probably nothing, if I had to guess), I would
like to see the doc let developers of code involving file names - in particular,
completion of possibly remote file names, know that they can bind this to
non-nil to prevent Tramp from opening a remote connection and possibly prompting
for a password.

That's the most important use case, _for now_ at least.  I thank you for letting
me know about this var for Icicles.  My point in filing the bug was to have the
doc let others who write file-name completion code know also.  I also thought
that the var name and description could be made a bit clearer.

> > The week after next we will study Homeland Security Advisory System
> > threat levels: `severe', `high', `significant', `general', 
> > and `low'.
> 
> Oh, surprise. I thought there's only the threat level `severe'.

;-)