From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Msuck: nntp://news.gmane.io/gmane.emacs.gnus.general/65684 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Russ Allbery Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.gnus.general Subject: Re: message-confirm-send Date: Thu, 15 Nov 2007 15:08:20 -0800 Organization: The Eyrie Message-ID: <87zlxfhztn.fsf@windlord.stanford.edu> References: <87y7czs16b.fsf@bzg.ath.cx> <87bq9vazy8.fsf@jidanni.org> NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1195168136 29904 80.91.229.12 (15 Nov 2007 23:08:56 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 15 Nov 2007 23:08:56 +0000 (UTC) To: ding@gnus.org Original-X-From: ding-owner+M14181@lists.math.uh.edu Fri Nov 16 00:09:01 2007 Return-path: Envelope-to: ding-account@gmane.org Original-Received: from util0.math.uh.edu ([129.7.128.18]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.50) id 1IsnpT-0001tF-Vw for ding-account@gmane.org; Fri, 16 Nov 2007 00:09:00 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1] helo=lists.math.uh.edu) by util0.math.uh.edu with smtp (Exim 4.63) (envelope-from ) id 1Isnp4-0003OE-8g; Thu, 15 Nov 2007 17:08:34 -0600 Original-Received: from mx1.math.uh.edu ([129.7.128.32]) by util0.math.uh.edu with esmtps (TLSv1:AES256-SHA:256) (Exim 4.63) (envelope-from ) id 1Isnp2-0003O1-Gb for ding@lists.math.uh.edu; Thu, 15 Nov 2007 17:08:32 -0600 Original-Received: from quimby.gnus.org ([80.91.231.51]) by mx1.math.uh.edu with esmtp (Exim 4.67) (envelope-from ) id 1Isnow-0001Hu-3O for ding@lists.math.uh.edu; Thu, 15 Nov 2007 17:08:32 -0600 Original-Received: from smtp3.stanford.edu ([171.67.20.26]) by quimby.gnus.org with esmtp (Exim 3.35 #1 (Debian)) id 1Isnor-0002zK-00 for ; Fri, 16 Nov 2007 00:08:21 +0100 Original-Received: from smtp3.stanford.edu (localhost.localdomain [127.0.0.1]) by localhost (Postfix) with SMTP id 94B074C795 for ; Thu, 15 Nov 2007 15:08:20 -0800 (PST) Original-Received: from windlord.stanford.edu (windlord.Stanford.EDU [171.64.19.147]) by smtp3.stanford.edu (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7741F4C676 for ; Thu, 15 Nov 2007 15:08:20 -0800 (PST) Original-Received: by windlord.stanford.edu (Postfix, from userid 1000) id 6D408E841A; Thu, 15 Nov 2007 15:08:20 -0800 (PST) In-Reply-To: <87bq9vazy8.fsf@jidanni.org> (jidanni@jidanni.org's message of "Fri, 16 Nov 2007 06:47:27 +0800") User-Agent: Gnus/5.110006 (No Gnus v0.6) Emacs/21.4 (gnu/linux) X-Spam-Score: -2.6 (--) List-ID: Precedence: bulk Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.gnus.general:65684 Archived-At: jidanni@jidanni.org writes: > Don't tell me all you manly man types run around all day without at > least one of > $ alias > alias cp='cp -i' > alias mv='mv -i' > alias rm='rm -i' > $ set -o > noclobber on The most useful analysis I've read of this sort of UI feature is that the usefulness of confirmation is inversely proportional to two things: * The frequency of the action. "Do you really want to delete your entire authentication database?" is a more useful question than "do you really want to list the contents of this directory?" * The ability of the confirmation logic to recognize common cases and *not* ask for confirmation for them, only in cases that are unusual and for which there's some reason to be unsure. The usefulness is *not* as clearly correlated with the severity of the operation. Frequency is far more important. This is because confirmation of frequent operations becomes automatic. Adding confirmation before sending a message will, for most people, essentially just change the keystroke for sending a message from C-c C-c to C-c C-c y. One becomes trained to enter the whole sequence each time, and then one ends up confirming even when one didn't want to. I've seen this behavior all the time with things like rm -i. People get so used to always entering y that the confirmation is useless for preventing mistakes. So, to look at those aliases again and judge them against the above criteria, I consider the rm -i alias to be useless. It just prompts for every file deletion and trains one to type y automatically. On the other hand, the cp -i alias and the noclobber setting I use personally, since overwriting a file is *not* the common case for cp, or for redirects, and while I become trained to enter y automatically after cp when I know I'm overwriting a file, the confirmation successfully catches cases where I didn't realize I was overwriting a file. By that criteria, confirmation on C-c C-c, since it happens every time without any recognition of common cases and attaches to a frequent operation, is useless in much the same way that the rm -i alias is useless. -- Russ Allbery (rra@stanford.edu)