How about making `sleep-for' interactive?

How about making `sleep-for' interactive?

[Marcin Borkowski]

Hi all,

I noticed today that `sleep-for' is not an (interactive) command.  IMHO
it should be - at least I can see a need for it.  Here is my use case.
I recorded a keyboard macro which edits the text in some way.  The macro
begins with isearching for something (which may be outside the part of
the buffer currently seen) and then changing.  Having e.g. a 1-second
delay between moving to that part and actually changing it would help
spot mistakes.

Since `sleep-for' is a builtin, I can't prepare a patch (I don't speak
C very well), but if I get a hint I can try (just to learn something
new).

WDYT?

--
Marcin Borkowski
http://mbork.pl

Re: How about making `sleep-for' interactive?

[Søren Pilgård]

On Thu, Jun 27, 2019 at 6:47 AM Marcin Borkowski <mbork@mbork.pl> wrote:
>
> Hi all,
>
> I noticed today that `sleep-for' is not an (interactive) command.  IMHO
> it should be - at least I can see a need for it.  Here is my use case.
> I recorded a keyboard macro which edits the text in some way.  The macro
> begins with isearching for something (which may be outside the part of
> the buffer currently seen) and then changing.  Having e.g. a 1-second
> delay between moving to that part and actually changing it would help
> spot mistakes.
>
> Since `sleep-for' is a builtin, I can't prepare a patch (I don't speak
> C very well), but if I get a hint I can try (just to learn something
> new).
>
> WDYT?
>

I can't really see the use.
You could always just do ```M-: (sleep-foor xxx)``` in the macro.
Being time sensitive and waiting for abortion is a bit too dangerous
in my taste, either I am sure and do it everywhere or I want to accept
/ decline in cases like that.

What I usually do in cases like that is to make a macro that moves to
the next occurrence, then does the changes and then moves to just the
beginning of the next occurrence again.
That way I can just call the macro repeatedly and it will move forward
to the next place where a change will happen each time.
If I decide not to apply the macro I will skip forward, either
searching manually for the next occurrence or sometimes just moving
the point forward so the macro will edit the next occurrence instead.

Re: How about making `sleep-for' interactive?

[Marcin Borkowski]

On 2019-06-27, at 09:46, Søren Pilgård <fiskomaten@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Thu, Jun 27, 2019 at 6:47 AM Marcin Borkowski <mbork@mbork.pl> wrote:
>>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> I noticed today that `sleep-for' is not an (interactive) command.  IMHO
>> it should be - at least I can see a need for it.  Here is my use case.
>> I recorded a keyboard macro which edits the text in some way.  The macro
>> begins with isearching for something (which may be outside the part of
>> the buffer currently seen) and then changing.  Having e.g. a 1-second
>> delay between moving to that part and actually changing it would help
>> spot mistakes.
>>
>> Since `sleep-for' is a builtin, I can't prepare a patch (I don't speak
>> C very well), but if I get a hint I can try (just to learn something
>> new).
>>
>> WDYT?
>>
>
> I can't really see the use.
> You could always just do ```M-: (sleep-foor xxx)``` in the macro.
> Being time sensitive and waiting for abortion is a bit too dangerous
> in my taste, either I am sure and do it everywhere or I want to accept
> / decline in cases like that.
>
> What I usually do in cases like that is to make a macro that moves to
> the next occurrence, then does the changes and then moves to just the
> beginning of the next occurrence again.
> That way I can just call the macro repeatedly and it will move forward
> to the next place where a change will happen each time.
> If I decide not to apply the macro I will skip forward, either
> searching manually for the next occurrence or sometimes just moving
> the point forward so the macro will edit the next occurrence instead.

Good points.  In addition to that, I discovered that screen is not
updated during macro execution, so my solution would have to involve
updating the display.

Let's forget about this idea.

Thanks,

-- 
Marcin Borkowski
http://mbork.pl

Re: How about making `sleep-for' interactive?

[Stefan Monnier]

> Good points.  In addition to that, I discovered that screen is not
> updated during macro execution, so my solution would have to involve
> updating the display.

The screen updating is not disabled during kbd-macro execution.
What happens is that the screen is only updated when Emacs is "idle".

Notice that `sleep-for` says:

    Pause, without updating display, for SECONDS seconds.

But you can use `sit-for` instead, which does update the display (by
default).


        Stefan

Re: How about making `sleep-for' interactive?

[Søren Pilgård]

On Thu, Jun 27, 2019 at 3:22 PM Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> wrote:
>
> > Good points.  In addition to that, I discovered that screen is not
> > updated during macro execution, so my solution would have to involve
> > updating the display.
>
> The screen updating is not disabled during kbd-macro execution.
> What happens is that the screen is only updated when Emacs is "idle".
>
> Notice that `sleep-for` says:
>
>     Pause, without updating display, for SECONDS seconds.
>
> But you can use `sit-for` instead, which does update the display (by
> default).
>
>

Would it make sense the sleep-for help text to mention sit-for?

Re: How about making `sleep-for' interactive?

[Noam Postavsky]

On Thu, 27 Jun 2019 at 00:45, Marcin Borkowski <mbork@mbork.pl> wrote:

> I noticed today that `sleep-for' is not an (interactive) command.

> Since `sleep-for' is a builtin, I can't prepare a patch (I don't speak
> C very well), but if I get a hint I can try (just to learn something
> new).

FYI, you can make any function interactive by setting its
interactive-form symbol property. For example,

(put 'sleep-for 'interactive-form
     '(interactive "nSleep for: "))