Re: Preventing inadvertent global modifications

[Max Nikulin <manikulin@gmail.com>]

On 13/09/2023 15:02, Ihor Radchenko wrote:
> Max Nikulin writes:
> 
>> Yesterday, when I was going to commit changes after editing several
>> headings in different places of an Org file, I was surprised by huge
>> diff with hundreds of chunks. Tags spread across the whole file were
>> adjusted by one or tow spaces. Probably I just accidentally hit C-u
>> before setting a tag to a new heading by C-c C-q. Of course, I did not
>> noticed it immediately. I managed to create a commit with real changes
>> without noise due to tags realignment. However I would like to prevent
>> similar issues in future.
> 
> You can set `org-auto-align-tags' to nil.

I saw it, but from its description I decided that its effect may be to 
broad. I have tried it and to my surprise it does not affect editing of 
heading, tags are kept aligned. M-<right> and M-<left> do not realign 
tags, so the value is not ignored.

C-u C-c C-q still realigns all tags in the buffer, so this option would 
not save me from getting huge diff.

I suspect there are enough commands having similar global (and so mostly 
hidden) effect. I may be unaware of them because I do not feel that I 
need such commands.

I admit that some fraction of users keep their files tidy calling C-u 
C-c C-q regularly. Perhaps at certain moment I will decide no align 
tags, but it should be a dedicated commit not mixed with other changes. 
My opinion that, by default, commands performing massive changes should 
require reasonable efforts to execute. It should help to avoid calling 
them unintentionally. Perhaps there is a better approach than annoying 
`yes-or-no-p'.