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I'm asking this question in response to the comments received on my answer to this question.

Perhaps someone can explain to me what I missed in the posted question that was glaringly apparent to everyone else. When I first saw it there were some things IMHO that made it a great candidate for "unclear what you are asking status" for it seemed the OP was looking for an answer to something that was not defined very well and IMHO had some glaring falsehoods like "Gedit always defaults to Matlab syntax highlighting". (VTC not possible due to bounty assignment)

Even one of the questions linked as similar states "Until you save a document in gedit, syntax highlighting is turned off" and experience tells me that when I open an unrecognized (unknown mime-type) file it defaults to plain text. So, I answered the question asked. The answer that was accepted is clearly superior to mine in that it seems to have answered what the OP intended to ask. It's certainly apparent after the fact what the OP was looking for but without that as a signpost? What did I miss in the question that makes it a good question? The comment (which I clearly missed) where the OP finally actually describes his problem wasn't edited into it as it should have been. In fact, I can't find a single response to any of the questions asked about this question edited into the OP.

Note: This is not intended in anyway to disparage the accepted answer (which in point of fact I upvoted as well)

I'm just wondering if I'm incorrect in my assumptions that A) The question is poorly crafted and B) Pertinent information should be edited into the original post

Please tell me what you think as it will have bearing on my future work. If I'm wrong about A) I need to adjust my quality standards accordingly and if I'm wrong about B) I can stop wasting my precious time encouraging OP's to edit pertinent information into there posts.

Thanks in advance!

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    B is absolutely right and you (all) should keep (or start) encouraging askers to edit their questions to include updated or additional information and not just let them go unnoticed in comments. The alternative if the OP doesn't react is to edit the question yourself and include important updates.
    – Byte Commander Mod
    Commented Jan 3, 2017 at 23:57
  • However, I also don't see why the accepted answer is perceived to be that helpful - to me it looks like "I tested it on my machine and it works as expected here" with a few beautiful screenshots...
    – Byte Commander Mod
    Commented Jan 4, 2017 at 0:02
  • @ByteCommander I would think the answer was helpful as the OP accepted it. To me, acceptance/upvoting an answer means "this worked for me/tested valid ." Whether that's the criteria utilized by the OP I cannot say with certainty but it seemed the most likely scenario.
    – Elder Geek
    Commented Jan 4, 2017 at 14:56

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
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I can't give a general answer but this how I look at it:

A) The question is poorly crafted

I don't think so because:

  • gtksourceview is mentioned (such advanced lib), so he did some research about the topic. But he didn't resume his finding clearly.
  • He mentioned "matlab highlighting", I just expected he saw it on GUI.
  • He said "'.sample' file for example." but I have previous experience with gtksourceview, so he seems talking about file format detection in Gedit.

B) Pertinent information should be edited into the original post.

I agree here, some additional info are comments. I followed those comments and didn't pay attention to ask putting them in the question.

I could be wrong, but there isn't a clear threshold to how much details is required. All depend on the audience.

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  • Can you clarify what you mean by "But he didn't resume his finding clearly" and why that isn't the same as "unclear what you are asking"?
    – Elder Geek
    Commented Jan 4, 2017 at 17:51
  • @ElderGeek I mean he didn't explain how he come up with that conclusion that the mime type is not detected correctly why not the .sample ext. Actually gtksourceview language spec use both in addition to comment style (3 ways to know the file syntax type). I'm sure, He already searched for *.sample matching, but came with nothing. So I asked him for file --mime-type -b yourfiles after you have answered and reply still in comments only :/. Because, I could expect where he is heading to, I didn't give it much importance and he is already accepted an answer. :) may be I have a loose QC.
    – user.dz
    Commented Jan 4, 2017 at 18:28
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    You seem to be sure of a number of things that don't appear in the question. I'm not making assumptions on what he searched for. I'm glad someone here has a firm grasp on the requirements. (I made a slight edit to try to provide more clarity) Perhaps you could further improve the question with your extended understanding of it or better yet provide a high quality answer for those who may have the same issue. :)
    – Elder Geek
    Commented Jan 4, 2017 at 18:42
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It no longer qualifies as a good question.

Author of the original question referred to here, and I can confirm it is related to a bug I discovered after seeing the comments and accepted answer. This is explained in my comment made January 1st.

I know it's not a good fit for this site now that I've learned the behavior is related to a bug. Gedit does in fact default to Matlab highlighting for some extensionless plain-text files on auto-save. This only became apparent to me after reading the accepted answer and working through the illustrated steps.

The accepted answer was superior to yours because they showed their work and included screenshots, though I think yours may also have been helpful (hard to say for sure now, you've removed it).

It is 'glaringly' clear from reading your question here and reviewing timestamps that my question caused you some frustration. Apologies for that. I'll try to be quicker to edit questions in response to comments. Perhaps you could get some closure - pun intended - now that we all know this is a bug by flagging it as off-topic? I'm happy to close it myself now that it served its purpose, but I'll wait a day to see how the community feels.

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  • Actually, It's far better now that @user.dz took the time to edit it. Perhaps you could further improve it by taking the time to edit in a link to the bug report. All I could find in your comment as an unrelated link to what you commented should be a new question. Is this what you are referring to?
    – Elder Geek
    Commented Jan 17, 2017 at 10:54
  • @ElderGeek From casual observation, this appears to be a much higher priority for you than for me so I invite you to please continue with the necessary edits and linking to the bug report you refer to (I'm unaware of its existence?). Two weeks into this thread and I note you are busily commenting, accepting answers, switching accepted answers, and deleting and editing your earlier comments. I do admire your devotion but I'm afraid I cannot prioritize this just now so I'll leave this in your very capable and energetic hands.
    – Tom Brossman
    Commented Jan 19, 2017 at 14:06
  • Please review your answer to this post. You said "now that we all know this is a bug". I did not and am unaware of one as I indicated in my comment.It seems we share a lack of information on the bug you referred to. I'm just shooting for continuous improvement. You are of course under no obligation to do the same. I changed my acceptance on this post to @user.dz answer as that member took the time to improve your post and add clarity to it. If you have any further confusion that I can clarify for you , please feel free to ping me.
    – Elder Geek
    Commented Jan 21, 2017 at 17:11

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