Re: comint-insert-input on non-command lines:

[Luc Teirlinck]

Richard Stallman wrote:

       I will update the docs as soon as I am sure that Richard does not
       object against reverting this change.

   This change shouldn't have been made now without discussion and my
   approval.  Reverting it is the right thing to do.

The change was made about two years ago with your approval, but it was
presented as eliminating code duplication without any change in
functionality.  Actually, from this thread I have the impression that
Nick was not even aware that his change involved a change in
functionality.  We discovered recently that there were several very
non-trivial changes in functionality, as well as bugs.  These changes
were never discussed, as people were not aware of them.  While Nick's
changes are nearly two years old, they were never part of any release,
so if we are going to revert them, then now is the time.

First of all, the change broke `C-c RET' completely when
comint-use-prompt-regexp is non-nil.  Secondly, it introduced
differences, in some derived modes substantial differences, between
`C-c RET' and RET, whereas the only difference is supposed to be that
`C-c RET' offers you a chance to edit the text that RET immediately
executes.  Some features of `C-c RET', which some people apparently
relied on, were eliminated.

The easiest way to deal with the above problems is to revert Nick's
changes, which Nick already partly did.  The work that remains to be
done if we continue this way is to better document the behavior of
`C-c RET', RET and mouse-2 in Comint buffers.

Because if comint-use-prompt-regexp is non-nil there are no fields in
the buffer, it is essentially impossible to implement something close
to Nick's `C-c RET' behavior if that variable is non-nil.

So the alternative to reverting Nicks change is: get rid of
comint-use-prompt-regexp entirely, something I believe we are not
ready to do, not now and maybe never; make RET behave like Nick's
`C-c RET'; put the old `C-c RET' and RET functionality on some
different keys, because people still want it (the old functionality is
especially powerful in external Inferior Lisp buffers); document all that.

The biggest and essentially irreversible decision in all this would be
the elimination of comint-use-prompt-regexp.  The amount of work would
be big and the risk would be big, all supposedly shortly before a release.

Sincerely,

Luc.