RE: C-n and C-a

[Drew Adams]

> >> FWIW, I think the right patch for dired would be to
> >> set truncate-lines to t.
> > Why?
> 
> Why not?  It uses a buffer formatted into columns, so any wrap-around
> messes up the clean column layout.

I have no problem with it, personally. It's good for a proposed change to be
accompanied by a rationale for the change; that's all.

Dired and (buffer-local) `truncate-lines' have been around nearly as long as
Emacs itself. I can't think of a good reason why the value here should be nil,
but perhaps someone knows why this was not changed to t before now? IOW, as you
say, why not?