From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Richard Stallman Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: Rectangular regions Date: Thu, 31 Oct 2013 16:22:33 -0400 Message-ID: References: Reply-To: rms@gnu.org NNTP-Posting-Host: plane.gmane.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-15 X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1383251256 1964 80.91.229.3 (31 Oct 2013 20:27:36 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 31 Oct 2013 20:27:36 +0000 (UTC) Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org To: Stefan Monnier Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Thu Oct 31 21:27:42 2013 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([208.118.235.17]) by plane.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1VbyqC-0004rM-3I for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Thu, 31 Oct 2013 21:27:40 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:59190 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1VbyqA-0000qe-SG for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Thu, 31 Oct 2013 16:27:38 -0400 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:53177) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1VbylH-0002ro-V7 for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 31 Oct 2013 16:22:37 -0400 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1VbylG-0000T1-M0 for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 31 Oct 2013 16:22:35 -0400 Original-Received: from fencepost.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::e]:36080) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1VbylG-0000Sx-In for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 31 Oct 2013 16:22:34 -0400 Original-Received: from rms by fencepost.gnu.org with local (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1VbylF-0004eA-OO; Thu, 31 Oct 2013 16:22:33 -0400 In-reply-to: (message from Stefan Monnier on Tue, 29 Oct 2013 21:59:20 -0400) X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: Error: Malformed IPv6 address (bad octet value). X-Received-From: 2001:4830:134:3::e X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.14 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:164756 Archived-At: [ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider [ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, [ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. I've installed earlier today a patch which adds basic support for rectangular regions. The entry point currently is `M-x rectangle-mark'. Besides making commands aware of rectangular regions (currently only things like C-w, M-w, C-y, and M-y pay attention to the shape of the region). This is an interesting feature. To make it really bloom, we need to have a way to operate on a rectangular region that works for all the functions that take a pair of buffer positions. The idea that occurs to me is to pass a start and end of the form (rectangle . POS), to tell these functions to operate on a rectangle with two specified corners. One issue thaht will require attention: when we properly handle formatting with variable with fonts, a rectangle will be defined by two horizontal positions, and each line will need a computation to determine which characters are between those positions. As we implement support for rectangular region in primitives, we should do it in a way that will handle this in the future. -- Dr Richard Stallman President, Free Software Foundation 51 Franklin St Boston MA 02110 USA www.fsf.org www.gnu.org Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software. Use Ekiga or an ordinary phone call.