read-only headers in message mode

read-only headers in message mode

[James Leifer]

Hello,

When composing a message, the headers are treated as text like any
other part of the document.  This has the advantage that one can edit
them at will... and therefore shoot oneself in the foot if one
chooses!

Now I'm all for being *able* to shoot myself in the foot, but most of
the time I want to be prevented from doing so accidentally.  Is there
any way of making the labels like "To: " and the ``--text follows this
line--'' *read-only* (like emacs customize mode)?

When I do modify the headers arbitrarily, can I get gnus to check them
for syntactic correctness before sending the article?

Cheers,

James Leifer
INRIA Rocquencourt

Re: read-only headers in message mode

[Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen]

James Leifer <James.Leifer@inria.fr> writes:

> Now I'm all for being *able* to shoot myself in the foot, but most of
> the time I want to be prevented from doing so accidentally.  Is there
> any way of making the labels like "To: " and the ``--text follows this
> line--'' *read-only* (like emacs customize mode)?

I seem to remember experimenting with this at one point -- there's
still code like

  (put-text-property
   (point)
   (progn
     (insert mail-header-separator "\n")
     (1- (point)))
   'read-only nil)

in message.el, which seems rather pointless.  I'm guessing that that
nil was t once upon a time.

I also seem to remember it being highly annoying having read-only
text in the buffer, but I don't remember why...

-- 
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
  larsi@gnus.org * Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen