Moving by entries and paragraphs in BibTeX mode

Moving by entries and paragraphs in BibTeX mode

[Yevgeniy Makarov]

Hello,

I find it surprising that forward-paragraph and backward-paragraph
commands move point by fields, not entries in BibTeX mode. (An entry
is a complete record for a publication, a field is its part, such as
Author.) The reason this is surprising is that the value of paragraph-
separate is "[ \t]*$", as in text mode. (The values of paragraph-start
are slightly different, but even if I make them the same it does not
change the behavior of BibTeX mode.)

I also did not find any commands that move the point from one entry to
the next or previous. There are bibtex-beginning-of-entry and bibtex-
end-of-entry, but they don't leave the current entry.

How can I move the point by entries?

Thank you,
Evgeny

Re: Moving by entries and paragraphs in BibTeX mode

[Roland Winkler]

Yevgeniy Makarov <emakarov@gmail.com> writes:

> I find it surprising that forward-paragraph and backward-paragraph
> commands move point by fields, not entries in BibTeX mode. (An entry
> is a complete record for a publication, a field is its part, such as
> Author.) The reason this is surprising is that the value of paragraph-
> separate is "[ \t]*$", as in text mode. (The values of paragraph-start
> are slightly different, but even if I make them the same it does not
> change the behavior of BibTeX mode.)

In BibTeX files, a `paragraph' is used in other context, too. Say
the function fill-paragraph operates on one field, not on one entry,
and I find that meaningful.

> I also did not find any commands that move the point from one entry to
> the next or previous. There are bibtex-beginning-of-entry and bibtex-
> end-of-entry, but they don't leave the current entry.

The reason there are no commands for this is most likely that up to
now nobody has missed them. (BibTeX files are like a database.
Rarely you need to browse through them one by one.) 

However, if you jump from one @ to the next / previous @ you are
most likely jumping from one entry to the other. I guess that typing
C-s @ is as efficient as executing a command that does perform this
action.

Roland

Re: Moving by entries and paragraphs in BibTeX mode

[Yevgeniy Makarov]

> In BibTeX files, a `paragraph' is used in other context, too. Say
> the function fill-paragraph operates on one field, not on one entry,
> and I find that meaningful.

You are right: this makes sense.

> However, if you jump from one @ to the next / previous @ you are
> most likely jumping from one entry to the other. I guess that typing
> C-s @ is as efficient as executing a command that does perform this
> action.

Thanks, that's a great idea.