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question about permanent-local
From: |
Drew Adams |
Subject: |
question about permanent-local |
Date: |
Fri, 19 Jun 2009 11:49:24 -0700 |
`kill-all-local-variables' kills all buffer-local variables, except those that
have property `permanent-local'. Many things call `kill-all-local-variables',
including `with-output-to-temp-buffer'.
Things like `with-output-to-temp-buffer' display temporary buffer content, but
the buffers they use are not necessarily temporary. For example, *Help* display
often uses `with-output-to-temp-buffer'.
Treating buffer content as temporary means at least two things: (1) erasing the
buffer initially, and (2) calling `kill-all-local-variables'.
The content is temporary, but the buffer might typically (like *Help*) continue
to exist. And some variables that are buffer-local to it could conceivably be
most related to something other than the content - the display, for instance.
Sometimes, you might not want some buffer-local variable to be considered
temporary, so you give it a non-nil `permanent-local' property. For example, you
could do that to variables `text-scale-mode-amount' and `face-remapping-alist',
if you wanted the same text-scaling to be retained.
However, just because you might want a particular buffer-local variable to not
be killed in some particular buffer (e.g. *Help*), does not imply that you don't
want it killed in other buffers.
What I'm getting at is this: isn't there a use case for something more
fine-grained that just putting `permanent-local' on the symbol, which inhibits
killing in _all_ buffers?
Precisely because these variables are buffer-local, wouldn't it sometimes be
useful to make them permanent-local on a per-buffer basis? For example, have an
alist or a buffer-name regexp, to control which buffers are affected? (This
would be in addition to using the symbol property, which would have the
permanent-local effect for all buffers, as now.)
Just wondering. I'm not very familiar with using `permanent-local'. Offhand, it
doesn't seem like the ideal tool for something that is buffer-specific. But I
know this way of doing things has been around for a long time, so I (rather than
Emacs) am probably missing something. Education welcome.
- question about permanent-local,
Drew Adams <=