Re: find-file dialog in Carbon Emacs is broken

[Jan D.]

> In any case, what MUST-MATCH != nil means in Emacs is that the user can
> specify any existing file.  If that is not what read-file-name does now with
> the Motif toolkit in that case, that's a bug.  Can you fix it?

Okay, then I misunderstood the meaning of MUST-MATCH.  I think the name is
confusing (for me at least).  If an existing file is wanted, it should be named
MUST-EXIST or something like that.

So we can use MUST-MATCH both for OSX and GTK.

> Basically Emacs will have to change so that commands from the menu bar and 
> tool bar call a new function that knows if this is a save or load. We then
> remove the use of a dialog entirely from read-file-name.
>
> We could define two new functions, read-input-file-name and
> read-output-file-name.  Would this do the job?

Yes, but if MUST-MATCH already shows this, we can use that.  But we need  a
method for opening a directory, as explained by Steven Tamm:

> Another distinction is whether or not we mean to open a file or a directory.
> To make the distinction in both the w32 & OSX code, we check for the prompt
> starting with "Dired".  That makes me ill.

I don't know what is best, to have a new function that reads directories, or to
extend the MUST-MATCH parameter with some value that indicates a directory read.


> Replace "Open File" with "Open old file" and "New buffer".
>
> It is not a good idea to encourage users to create a buffer to edit a new
> file without specifying the file name.  So instead let's have "Open File"
> and "New File"; "New File" should use the Save dialog to choose the file
> name.
>
> See any problem with that?

No, that is okay.

        Jan D.