Re: Proposal: move write-contents-functions higher up in basic-save-buffer

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Eric Abrahamsen <address@hidden>
> Date: Tue, 23 May 2017 15:19:11 +0800
> 
> Most special-mode buffers aren't visiting a file, and thus they miss out
> on all the `do-auto-save' and `save-some-buffers' mechanisms. I'd guess
> a fair number of packages that use special-mode *do* have some concept
> of saving, or persisting data in some other way.
> 
> I think the `write-contents-functions' hook would be an ideal way of
> solving this problem, except that the way `basic-save-buffer' is
> written, it won't let you get that far without having a file name.
> 
> My proposal is to declare `write-contents-functions' as *explicitly* a
> hook for buffers that don't have any file associated with them at all
> (this would be in contrast to `write-file-functions'). Then we'd move it
> up higher in the process: either earlier in `basic-save-buffer', or all
> the way up to `save-buffer' -- that way `basic-save-buffer' could only
> be for buffers that have a file.

Did you investigate the alternative -- teach basic-save-buffer to save
buffers that don't visit files?  If that's possible, it should be
easier.