Re: Newbie: Interactive goto-line ?!

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@elta.co.il>]

> Newsgroups: gnu.emacs.help
> From: Floyd Davidson <floyd@barrow.com>
> Date: Tue, 24 Feb 2004 21:31:51 -0900
> Xref: shelby.stanford.edu gnu.emacs.help:121236
> Sender: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+eliz=elta.co.il@gnu.org
> >
> >For example, "M-g M-g" is invaluable as a means to fix bad
> >font-lock fontifications (a.k.a. syntax highlighting).
> 
> That is not a default binding for either GNU Emacs or XEmacs, so
> I'm not positive which function you have bound to it.

Did you try "C-h c M-g M-g"?  In my Emacs it says

   M-g M-g runs the command font-lock-fontify-block

AFAICS, this is the default binding of GNU Emacs since Emacs 20.x at
least (couldn't check in Emacs 19 where I'm typing this).

> Incidentally, with XEmacs the default binding for M-g is the
> goto-line function.

Yes, we considered this during development of Emacs 20.1 and rejected
this binding, since M-g is a prefix of commands that change fonts and
text properties like bold, underlined, etc.

> >If you find yourself using goto-line too often, you should take a good
> >look at the way you use Emacs: most uses of goto-line should be
> >unnecessary because Emacs interface with various programs that report
> >line numbers, such as compilers, Grep, etc., have commands to
> >automatically visit the file and line number being reported.
> 
> If you are not using goto-line you are missing a very quick way
> to move around in files.

I was serious.  If you have serious counter-arguments why goto-line is
better then "C-x `" and its ilk, please tell.

In a nutshell, the reason why goto-line should not be a frequently
used command is that normally there's no reason to want to get to line
number N unless you have a program that told you there's something
interesting on that line.