lispref/text.texi

lispref/text.texi

[Richard Stallman]

Would someone please check lispref/text.texi for accuracy?

It is a somewhat large file.  If you check just half of it,
that would be good; then I could look for someone else to
check the other half.

Re: lispref/text.texi

[Andreas Roehler]

Richard Stallman schrieb:
> Would someone please check lispref/text.texi for accuracy?
>
> It is a somewhat large file.  If you check just half of it,
> that would be good; then I could look for someone else to
> check the other half.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Emacs-devel mailing list
> Emacs-devel@gnu.org
> http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/emacs-devel
>
>   

As the text info probably is referred to widely by less
experienced people - as me - I could go on reading it
from this in so far inevitable point of view.

As such an endeavour easily may end up by reporting a
lot of errors which are none, we could agree to simply
ignore reports in that case.

Than it starts with

text.texi

Line 30

"Keep in mind that point is always between two
characters, and the cursor appears on the character
after point."

Is this remark indeed necessary at this point? I don't
remember a text-related command, where this is
important. (Or should be important conceiving a
text editing facility as a tool, which hides such internals
from the user, unless he wishes otherwise.)

Given the group of users indicated, I fear a certian
danger of distraction and/or confusion from it.

__
Andreas Roehler

Re: lispref/text.texi

[Thien-Thi Nguyen]

Andreas Roehler <andreas.roehler@easy-emacs.de> writes:

> "Keep in mind that point is always between two
> characters, and the cursor appears on the character
> after point."
>
> Given the group of users indicated, I fear a certian
> danger of distraction and/or confusion from it.

if we drop this, we will see more questions than now;
more confusion arises from forgetting this detail,
which properly can be considered as relating to the
design of emacs, not just its implementation.

anyway, the "group of users indicated" is people who
wish to program emacs using emacs lisp, for which even
a small bit of implementation detail can sometimes be
considered as design detail.  (they are more likely to
blur the line, being programmers, and thus Confused By
Choice.)

i will look at text.texi this week, as well, starting
from the end and working backwards (but "accumulating"
forwards :-).

thi

Re: lispref/text.texi

[Andreas Roehler]

Thien-Thi Nguyen schrieb:
> Andreas Roehler <andreas.roehler@easy-emacs.de> writes:
>
>   
>> "Keep in mind that point is always between two
>> characters, and the cursor appears on the character
>> after point."
>>
>> Given the group of users indicated, I fear a certian
>> danger of distraction and/or confusion from it.
>>     
>
> if we drop this, we will see more questions than now;
> more confusion arises from forgetting this detail,
> which properly can be considered as relating to the
> design of emacs, not just its implementation.
>
> anyway, the "group of users indicated" is people who
> wish to program emacs using emacs lisp, for which even
> a small bit of implementation detail can sometimes be
> considered as design detail.  (they are more likely to
> blur the line, being programmers, and thus Confused By
> Choice.)
>
> i will look at text.texi this week, as well, starting
> from the end and working backwards (but "accumulating"
> forwards :-).
>
> thi

So maybe we will meet somewhere in the middle of text.texi. :)

OK. To be serious: Will reflect this further. In any
case it seems nothing to be done quickly before the
release.

Just let me - while reading forward this day - give a
more detailed description of this question (a suspected
intermix of meanings of `current', `at', `before' and
`after') nonetheless.

;;;

Let's see the description of `(point)':
...

"Return value of point, as an integer."

Assume we got a value of 10.

If we now speak of an integer `beyond' that value,
everyone would think of 11, 12 and so on.

AFAIU `beyond' excludes the present. If we are here, we
are not `beyond'.

Now reading the text.texi:

Docu `split-line' declares: This command splits the
    current line, moving the portion of the line after
    point down.

Here is mentioned `after point' i.e. indeed
`beyond'. So if (point) returned 10, I would assume pos
with value 11 is affected.

But what happens at the visual scene?: Just the char
the point is on - the char whose position-value was
returned by `(point)' - i.e. 10 in this example - is
moved by `split-line.'

I assume there are reasons to put it that way and also
that there is no way to have all the benefits of this
world united.

Nonetheless I'm dreaming of a text-editing-world where

`before' means `before visible point', the position
lower than the value returned of (point)

`after' a position greater than the value returned
of (point)

while `at' means just the position/char the
visible point (cursor) is on.

__
Andreas Roehler

PS. Would be great to see an example where the point
being in reality before the shown position matters - as
far as text-editing functions are concerned.

(As already written, my idea was to exclude that from
this level or docu-part, but may be wrong here.)

Re: lispref/text.texi

[Richard Stallman]

    > "Keep in mind that point is always between two
    > characters, and the cursor appears on the character
    > after point."
    >
    > Given the group of users indicated, I fear a certian
    > danger of distraction and/or confusion from it.

This will not be changed, so please let's not discuss the issue.

Re: lispref/text.texi

[Kevin Rodgers]

Andreas Roehler wrote:
> PS. Would be great to see an example where the point
> being in reality before the shown position matters - as
> far as text-editing functions are concerned.

When point is at the beginning or end of the buffer, i.e. before the
first character or after the last character, so that you can insert
text before or after those characters resp.  If text was always inserted
before or after the character point was on [sic], you'd need a special
way to handle the beginning and end of the buffer.

-- 
Kevin

Re: lispref/text.texi

[Andreas Roehler]

Kevin Rodgers schrieb:
> Andreas Roehler wrote:
>> PS. Would be great to see an example where the point
>> being in reality before the shown position matters - as
>> far as text-editing functions are concerned.
>
> When point is at the beginning or end of the buffer, i.e. before the
> first character or after the last character, so that you can insert
> text before or after those characters resp.  If text was always inserted
> before or after the character point was on [sic], you'd need a special
> way to handle the beginning and end of the buffer.
>

Thanks responding this question.

,----
| File: text, Node: Insertion
|
| Inserting Text
| ==============
|
|   "Insertion" means adding new text to a buffer.  The inserted text goes
| at point--between the character before point and the character after 
point.
`----

Understand from here, that the way to insert doesn't
change. Only the location of the point after insertion
- before or after inserted text - differs.

So far still in the dark.

__
Andreas Roehler