Re: Note buffer killed unexpectedly

[Nick Dokos <nicholas.dokos@hp.com>]

Raymond Zeitler <r.zeitler@ieee.org> wrote:

> After typing a note, I pressed C-u C-c C-c and unintentionally killed the
> buffer without saving the note.  I should've pressed C-c C-c, but I'm so
> used to pressing C-u C-c C-c to refile each new task, that I used that key
> combination instead.
> 
> Why would adding a prefix argument to C-c C-c kill *Org Note*?
> 

It seems it's by design: org-store-log-note() contains the following code:

    ...
    (when (or current-prefix-arg org-note-abort)
      (when org-log-into-drawer
	(org-remove-empty-drawer-at
	 (if (stringp org-log-into-drawer) org-log-into-drawer "LOGBOOK")
	 org-log-note-marker))
      (setq lines nil))

so current-prefix-arg causes lines to be set to nil, and the note is just thrown away.

> In general I'm nervous about using scratch buffers such as *Org Note* for
> anything I wish to save.  Is there an option to auto-save its contents to a
> visited file called something like ~/#Org Note#?  Or can I add a
> confirmation before I close the buffer?  Perhaps if I modified
> org-add-log-note to somehow change the call to
> (org-switch-to-buffer-other-window "Org Note")...?
> 

You can try getting rid of the current-prefix-arg and see if you get
into other problems, but only Carsten can say why it is that way to
begin with.

Nick

PS. I did some git archaelogy:

commit 3d2e1c0f04c4bb3eaeb2627d00c8cba6e376f8eb modified things a bit in
this part of the code, but the current-prefix-arg behavior predated
it. The earliest commits I found were commit
2b3fe71634d8afb7e5e6da7606223e82481f0fa8 which added the capability to
add a note interactively and also remotely from the agenda, and commit
fe939ecb95d36377162bf1cb9ce63c2b6047612b which was a massive structure
cleanup/reorg with no substantive code changes, but I think the
org-store-log-note() function existed before the git era.