bug#58788: 29.0.50; [PATCH] Respect inhibit-message

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: dick.r.chiang@gmail.com
> Date: Tue, 25 Oct 2022 17:03:53 -0400
> 
> It's borderline criminal that the echo area gets cleared
> when inhibit-message is true.

No documentation promised that the previous message will not be
cleared when inhibit-message is set.  We just avoid displaying new
messages.

We could extend the mechanism to allow it to prevent the clearing as
well, but that would probably mean inhibit-message will have to be a
tristate, because by now it's too late to change what its non-nil
value produces.  So we'd need to introduce a special value (not nil
and not t) which will have this effect.

> * doc/lispref/display.texi (Displaying Messages): Revert 164a7eb.
> * lisp/minibuffer.el (clear-minibuffer-message): Revert 164a7eb.
> * src/xdisp.c (message3): Remove errant clear_message() from 2004.

I don't understand what that has to do with the dont-clear-message
thingy.  That is about something else: it prevents clearing the
message when there's an input event, like if the user types some key.
I see no reason why we should remove that feature.

> +(ert-deftest xdisp-tests--respect-inhibit-message ()
> +  "It's borderline criminal that inhibit-message still clears echo area."

Please keep your contempt for other people out of the patches, if you
want them applied.