bug#24150: 26.0.50; New command: dired-create-empty-file

[Tino Calancha]

On Mon, 3 Jul 2017, Eli Zaretskii wrote:

Thanks for your comprehensive replay.
You know, you are the boss, so i will do what you say i must do.  Anyway,
let me defend my point after your replay.
> First, I think this might be mixing two separate requests: one is the
> desire to start a new file from Dired, the other is to create an empty
> file on disk.  I think these should be kept separate because they
> serve 2 different needs; in particular, the latter is not related to
> Dired in any way.
Honestly, i don't see the point to add a new keybinding in Dired for 
`find-file' having already the global `C-x C-f'.  I think the 
people in the threads are all aware about `C-x C-f': they are not looking
for reduce `find-file' to just one key. 
To me, it seems that those people are demanding for fast 
creationg of an _empty_ new file in Dired.  At least is what i got after 
reading them.

> I have no issues with adding a Dired keybinding that would call
> find-file without much ado.  I'm not sure whether it should be bound
> to M-+ or to "C-u +", but I will defer to opinions of others on that.
>
> But I don't think M-+ or whatever we bind that command to should
> actually _create_ an empty file on disk.  This is not how Emacs works
> with files; "C-x C-f" will not create a file until you save the
> buffer.  That "+" actually creates a directory is IMO an exception
> rather than the rule: nothing else makes sense with directories, since
> users cannot type directory contents into a buffer and then save it,
> at least not easily.
Dired is a file/directory manager inside Emacs.  I could even imagine 
people whom uses Emacs just to use Dired, because I was one of those guys.
You are right, a command to create an empty file is not the usual way 
for Emacs, as an editor, but I consider perfectly reasonable/necessary to 
assign a keybinding in a file manager for such operation.  One person in 
the threads above mentioned he wished this feature when working in a 
python project.  I often felt the same when working in python projects.

> I do recognize a possible need for a function, or maybe even a
> command, to create an empty disk file.  AFAIK, we don't have such a
> function, although it's not hard to write.  But I think the use cases
> for such a command are quite rare and niche cases, so I think we
> shouldn't have a keybinding for it, not even in Dired.
Obviosly is disagree here.  I found it useful in my workflow, that's why i 
wrote the function and opened the issue.  Many people watched the threads,
that means is not such rare feature.
> Let users who
> need this command frequently bind it to a key; with time, if it turns
> out I'm wrong and these use cases are much more frequent, we can
> decide on providing a binding by default.
>
> So, to summarize my POV: (a) it's okay to add a Dired keybinding for
> find-file; (b) let's add a command with no binding for creating an
> empty file.
I don't find useful (a).
The (b), for the normal user not hacking the lisp sources, doesn't make
much difference:
M-! touch new-file RET
M-x my-create-empty-file RET
;; The only difference is that the second will create parents dirs as 
;; needed.

We shouldn't assume that most of Emacs users set up their own bindings.  I 
know many buddies loving Emacs, using it many hours per day for 
working, and they keep their defaults .emacs files.
They don't know elisp.  They just want everything comes built-in.
We must not defraud those people.