Re: emacs-lock enhancements

[Stefan Monnier]

> I'm interested in incorporating into Emacs some of the functionality
> (not code) of Noah Friedman's protbuf.el, i.e., the ability to protect
> a buffer against killing.

We already have a fair bit of Noah's code, so at least from a copyright
point of view, copying code shouldn't be a problem (we'd still need Noah
to agreed, of course, but the prognosis is pretty good).

Of course, reimplementing might actually be simpler from a technical
point of view.

> Currently, emacs-lock.el does something similar, though it has some problems:
>  - It's not a proper minor-mode, so the locked status doesn't show in
>    the modeline.

It would be good to fix it so it uses define-minor-mode.

>  - It deals with telnet and shell buffers as special cases, instead of
>    handling all buffers with live processes.

Sounds like it would be good to improve that as well.

> What is the best interface for that: having two different minor modes
> (let's say "emacs-lock-dont-kill-mode' and
> `emacs-lock-dont-exit-mode'), or just one and somehow setting a flag
> to indicate the desired level of protection, sort of like
> overwrite-mode distinguishes between "normal" and "binary" modes?

I single major mode sounds sufficient.  The distinction between the two
cases could even be done with a global variable, rather than being
per-buffer.


        Stefan