bug#35062: [PATCH v3 2/3] constify a bit of xterm.c

[Konstantin Kharlamov <hi-angel@yandex.ru>]

On Сб, Apr 20, 2019 at 14:01, Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> wrote:
>>  Date: Sat, 20 Apr 2019 13:31:44 +0300
>>  From: Konstantin Kharlamov <hi-angel@yandex.ru>
>>  Cc: eggert@cs.ucla.edu, 35062@debbugs.gnu.org
>> 
>>  On Сб, Apr 20, 2019 at 09:53, Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> wrote:
>>  >>  Date: Sat, 20 Apr 2019 04:09:19 +0300
>>  >>  From: Konstantin Kharlamov <hi-angel@yandex.ru>
>>  >>  Cc: Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>, 35062@debbugs.gnu.org
>>  >>
>>  > I don't think I follow: Emacs's search commands do highlight the
>>  > matches, and we also have symbol-search commands ("M-s _" etc.), 
>> so
>>  > what exactly is missing?
>> 
>>  See: to any search a word in Emacs you have to either type it 
>> manually
>>  or copy-paste it. And then if you get unlucky to have next match
>>  offscreen, the search gonna carry currently visible portion of text
>>  away.
>> 
>>  In other editors and IDEs it's implemented instead by selecting a 
>> word,
>>  which makes the editor to highlight matches.
> 
> "M-s ." will highlight matches for the symbol at point, without even
> requiring you to select that symbol.

Wow, that's cool, I didn't know about (isearch-forward-symbol-at-point).

>>  That's similar to what highlight-symbol.el is doing: you put a caret
>>  over a text, and after a short timeout (IIRC you can't set timeout
>>  to 0 as it introduces lags to Emacs) it highlights visible matches
>>  of the symbol under the caret. And then, if you want to, you can
>>  press a hotkey to lock the highlight.
> 
> So you want to avoid typing "M-s .", is that right?  But selecting a
> symbol will need more keystrokes (except for very short symbols), so
> where's the gain in that?

Well, me not knowing about "M-s ." aside, I understand one can't 
directly compare having to select a text in other editors with Emacs, 
because those are mouse-oriented, and Emacs is keyboard-oriented. The 
"Emacsy" solution is implemented in highlight-symbol.el, and it is 
quicker than typing "M-s .": you just put a caret over a symbol, and 
matches are automatically shown.

I just thought if I can write an analog of highlight-symbol.el by 
binding the "M-s ."