Scratch buffers

[atom]

Scratch buffers

[defunkt]

I really dislike *scratch* fwiw. It's meant to save you time but as a beginner adds so much complexity to the editor. As the first buffer you ever see it seems strange and important, but it's actually neither.

cmd+n then M-x emacs-lisp-mode is not hard, especially for someone who is often writing in Emacs Lisp mode. You could easily create a keyboard shortcut to emulate the behavior.

The *scratch* mode didn't encourage me to learn Emacs Lisp, playing in ~/.emacs did. I agree that it should be easy to run a region of code from a .coffee or .js file but I think we should stick to making it really easy to jump to your ~/.atom/atom.coffee file instead of adding a whole new concept to the app.

In atom we have the advantage of knowing you have an ~./atom directory immediately, because we create it.

[wfarr]

The Emacs Lisp evaluation is only one part of why I like *scratch*.

Emacs allows you to create arbitrary buffers not coupled to a file path. I use them all the time for just dropping a piece of text so I can come back to it later. That's really the most important part of *scratch* to me.

[defunkt]

I'm only against having this be turned on by default. I'd install and use a Scratch extension, but the way Emacs presents it as a core editor concept is crazy confusing.

Part of that is fileless buffers - I think they're confusing too. They get persisted somewhere, right? Why is it hidden behind a smokescreen? It'd be nicer to call them autosave buffers and have the path automatically chosen, e.g. ~/.atom/scratch in this case.

[wfarr]

I'm okay with having them be an extension.

The *scratch* buffer is not attached to any file and is not persisted. You may persist a file-less buffer by forcing a "save as" and specifying a path.

Additionally, Emacs will only prompt to write an unsaved buffer at exit if and only if that buffer is attached to a file path.

[erebor]

It's funny, the scratch buffer was one of the few things I did
understand when I started emacs-ing.

In fact, it may still be the only thing about emacs I really understand. :)

On Mon, Oct 22, 2012 at 3:51 PM, Will Farrington
[email protected]:

I'm okay with having them be an extension.

The scratch buffer is not attached to any file and is not persisted.
You may persist a file-less buffer by forcing a "save as" and
specifying a path.

Additionally, Emacs will only prompt to write an unsaved buffer at exit if
and only if that buffer is attached to a file path.

—
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com//issues/77#issuecomment-9680100.

[ergwun]

Now see:
https://atom.io/packages/scratch

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