Re: Better ways to inspect text properties?

[Samuel Wales <samologist@gmail.com>]

a good question imo!  tangentially, by coincidence i was wanting some
similar things to understand better.

showing the output prettily would be great.  c-u c-x = is just a bit
limited.  some kind of inspector?

what if we could show all text properties in a buffer kind of like visible-mode?

is it possible to diff two buffers completely?  i.e. not only the text
as shown [or folded] but the properties too?

that would allow regression testing of changes that affect only text
properties.  i don't mean displaying colors or so as a bespoke
non-traditional diff but rather the text property differnces as text.

can a buffer with text properties be saved to a file and reloaded
preserving properties?

what about visibility and folding?  could they be preserved like that
also?  my regression testing could be improved.

i also still struggle with visibility and folding and the fucntios for
getting visible-only parts of a buffer, or copying and inserting in
buffers, or looping only visible lines etc.  i keep getting results i
do not expect.  [cannot debug now.]  e.g. i am in magit and it is
partly folded and i want to do various programmatic copy or operate
type operations on visible.

i have not even yet found a good protocol for pp and frineds yet to
insert nicely into buffer at point, when called after a pp expression
with c-x c-=.  even for a paren-containing sexp, not only a string
with text properties.

so idk it is probably just me and not finding documentation that suits
me well for it, but it seems a ripe area.

On 10/26/22, Eduardo Ochs <eduardoochs@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi list...
>
> suppose that I create a file /tmp/foo.org whose contents are just
> this:
>
>   a[[http://b/][c]]d
>
> and then I visit /tmp/foo.org, and I pretty-print the result of
> (buffer-substring (point-min) (point-max)). The result is:
>
> #("a[[http://b/][c]]d\n" 0 1
>   (fontified t)
>   1 13
>   (face org-link font-lock-multiline t keymap
>         (keymap
>          (follow-link . mouse-face)
>          (mouse-3 . org-find-file-at-mouse)
>          (mouse-2 . org-open-at-mouse))
>         mouse-face highlight invisible org-link htmlize-link
>         (:uri "http://b/")
>         help-echo "LINK: http://b/" fontified t)
>   13 14
>   (face org-link font-lock-multiline t keymap
>         (keymap
>          (follow-link . mouse-face)
>          (mouse-3 . org-find-file-at-mouse)
>          (mouse-2 . org-open-at-mouse))
>         mouse-face highlight invisible org-link rear-nonsticky
>         (mouse-face highlight keymap invisible intangible help-echo
> org-linked-text htmlize-link)
>         htmlize-link
>         (:uri "http://b/")
>         help-echo "LINK: http://b/" fontified t)
>   14 15
>   (font-lock-multiline t keymap
>                        (keymap
>                         (follow-link . mouse-face)
>                         (mouse-3 . org-find-file-at-mouse)
>                         (mouse-2 . org-open-at-mouse))
>                        mouse-face highlight face org-link rear-nonsticky
>                        (mouse-face highlight keymap invisible
> intangible help-echo org-linked-text htmlize-link)
>                        htmlize-link
>                        (:uri "http://b/")
>                        help-echo "LINK: http://b/" fontified t)
>   15 16
>   (font-lock-multiline t keymap
>                        (keymap
>                         (follow-link . mouse-face)
>                         (mouse-3 . org-find-file-at-mouse)
>                         (mouse-2 . org-open-at-mouse))
>                        mouse-face highlight invisible org-link face
> org-link htmlize-link
>                        (:uri "http://b/")
>                        help-echo "LINK: http://b/" fontified t)
>   16 17
>   (font-lock-multiline t keymap
>                        (keymap
>                         (follow-link . mouse-face)
>                         (mouse-3 . org-find-file-at-mouse)
>                         (mouse-2 . org-open-at-mouse))
>                        mouse-face highlight invisible org-link face
> org-link htmlize-link
>                        (:uri "http://b/")
>                        help-echo "LINK: http://b/" rear-nonsticky
>                        (mouse-face highlight keymap invisible
> intangible help-echo org-linked-text htmlize-link)
>                        fontified t)
>   17 18
>   (rear-nonsticky t fontified t)
>   18 19
>   (fontified t))
>
> This is not very human-friendly (to me). Can you recommend me ways to
> optimize that output?
>
>   Thanks in advance,
>     Eduardo Ochs
>     http://angg.twu.net/eepitch.html
>
>


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