On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 4:30 PM, Deniz Dogan <deniz.a.m.dogan@gmail.com>wrote:

> 2009/8/14 Xah Lee <xahlee@gmail.com>:
> > i share this view.
> > though, in my experiment, i find that there are often situations where
> > shrinking all whitespaces including EOL is not convenient. Here's a
> example:
> > -----------------------------
> >    numRep=0
> >    for couple in findreplace:
> > c    numRep += s.count(couple[0])
> >       outtext=s.replace(couple[0],couple[1])
> >       s=outtext
> > -----------------------------
> > where the c is the cursor point.
> > If you shrink all whitespaces including EOL, the the current line becomes
> > joined with previous line.
> > what i find more ideal is this:
> > when the current line contain non-whitespace chars, then shrink just
> spaces
> > and tabs, but if the current line does not contain non-whitespace chars
> > (it's all white space), then shrink all all spaces, tab, EOL.
> > the code i've been using is this:
> > [snip code]
>
> Not a bad idea. I'd like to take your idea and revise it a bit: If
> there are only whitespace characters characters between point and EOL,
> nuke including newlines. Otherwise, nuke excluding newlines.
>
> What do you think?
>

i think that'd bring the next non-whitespace line to the current line,
right?

but in general, considering this thread in whole, i share your view with
merging just-one-space with delete-blank-lines, and the behavior be
depending on context. Something like a shrink-whitespace-dwim.

I feel there are too many small functions on shrinking white spaces, esp
those with a shortcut.
e.g. C-x C-o for delete-blank-lines and just-one-space with M-SPC.

i think that these can be merged into a single dwim version with a single
shortcut, because i think most of the time context can correctly guess the
desired behavior.

i think this applies to few other emacs editing functions for user
convenience. One example i came to is about the 9 or so commands on letter
case changing. Some work on word, some on region... with transient-mark-mode
on now, the region versions could be merged. The lower case and upper case
and cap first versions can also be merged, i think, into one dwim version
that just cycles.

thanks.

  Xah
☄