Re: line-move-visual

["B. T. Raven" <nihil@nihilo.net>]

Stefan Monnier wrote:
>>> principal way of working, rather than in special cases in some obscure
>>> feature (keyboard macros).
>>      Keyboard macros are far from obscure.
> 
> Indeed.
> 
>>> And it was dashed near impossible to move easily to the middle of
>>> long, long lines.
>>      C-u <some number> right-arrow

Or more conveniently:

C-s <some chars> [C-s ad libitum] RET

> 
> How convenient!
> Say you're in a window and want to go down 3 visual lines on the same
> long logical line.  What number do you use?  Ok, let's make it easier
> and say that you happen to know that the window is 76-chars wide.
> So 76 by 3? quick? quick?
> Now let's do that again but with 13 lines, where you don't actually know
> it's "13": you first have to count it.
> The best I could come up with, is C-76 C-f and then C-x z z z ... until
> you reach the line.
> 
> Now this all becomes a lot more interesting once you add word-wrap into
> the mix, or TABs, or bytes displayed \NNN, or the presence of various
> fonts and/or font-sizes on that long line, or variable-pitch fonts, ...
> 
> Clearly visual line movement is really handy in such long lines.
> So rather than "C-u <some number> right-arrow", the better answer would
> have been: M-x visual-line-mode RET C-n ...
> 
> 
>         Stefan "who reached for the mouse in all those cases, tho
>                 typically only after first unconsciously hitting C-n
>                 a few times and then realizing that C-n jumped way
>                 further than intended"

Or, since text editors are trying to wean themselves of everything that
smacks of word processing, it might be better to follow Mark Crispin's
suggestion to make line-move-visual default to nil and to bind the up
-down arrow keys to long-lines navigation.

Ed