Re: What's your favourite *under_publicized* editing feature of Emacs?

[Perry Smith <pedzsan@gmail.com>]

On Jan 29, 2011, at 8:46 AM, Oleksandr Gavenko wrote:

> On 2011-01-29 0:59, Stefan Monnier wrote:
>>> I use hexl-mode all the time.
>>> I've often needed an insert, as opposed to overwrite.  Do you know if
>>> there's a way to insert?
>> 
>> Sadly, there isn't.  I have a new mode I call "nhexl-mode" which does
>> "the same" as hexl-mode but in a completely different way (the
>> conversion is done in a font-lockish way, so the buffer's content is
>> not affected, only the display) so you can use it with buffer insertion
>> and pretty much anything else.  Sadly, it bumps into some severe
>> performance limitations in the current redisplay code, so it's largely
>> unusable other than on very small buffers :-(
>> 
> It is possible read only portion of file by Emacs
> and don't load all file content into buffer?
> 
> Many hex viewer in read-only mode allow open large files without
> performance penalty. Emacs don't.

This thread is beginning to drift a bit... but something I wish I had was a way
to view a file without loading all of it.  I look at hugh trace files and I have to
get out of emacs and start a shell so I can use more / less.

The shame of it all! ;-)

I don't know of such a critter.  If there is one, that would be super cool.

Perry