Re: Trouble fontifying /** ... */

[Alan Mackenzie <acm@muc.de>]

Hi, Davin!

On Sun, Feb 01, 2009 at 05:17:54PM +1300, Davin Pearson wrote:
> 2009/1/30 Alan Mackenzie <acm@muc.de>:
> > Fair question.  It actually takes a few seconds multiplied by the
> > number of people you do it for.  It means doing drudge work, over and
> > over again.  It is a task which can't be automated.

> > And "clicking" on a URL might easily mean copying the URL with the
> > mouse, pasting it into a browser, after having had to start X-Windows
> > and fire up the browser.  Having done this, one has somehow to
> > transfer the file to Emacs to look at it.  Not everybody is online
> > all the time.  Richard Stallman is well known for this.  There are
> > still some people who use a modem and need to pay telephone charges
> > by the minute.  I often read mail over an SSH link from a Linux text
> > terminal.

> What about email attachments.  Are they acceptable?

Sort of, I suppose.  But "acceptable" isn't perhaps the best way of
looking at it.  The posts on help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org are all competing for
the attention of people able to answer them.  Anything which makes it a
hassle to see what somebody is asking about reduces the chances of
anybody bothering with this hassle.

For me, the sort of post I'm most likely to answer are (i) ones which
just need a snappy 1-line answer, often from newbies who're still
struggling their way round the manuals; (ii) ones which I feel are my
responsibility (involving CC Mode); (iii) ones which look like I'll learn
something from.

Anything which makes it less obvious what a post's about makes it less
likely I'll answer it.  The same probably holds for other Emacs
developers.

> Using cut & paste from Emacs to Gmail splits lines at irrational
> positions making it hard to read such text.

Ouch!  I hate this sort of thing - software which imposes "helpful"
features on you.  "Hey!  Gmail fills text for you AUTOMATICALLY!!!!".
Then developers justify it with "but that's what \"most people\" want".

Does this line splitting happen when you're composing the email (which
you can correct, and isn't too bad, because you're only pasting in a
small amount of text ;-), or after you've posted it (which is
inexcusable)?

Does Gmail perhaps have some options you could set to fix this?
Something like "text width" or "automatic filling", or something?
Gmail's written by Google, isn't it?  I thought they were decent software
engineers.

How about submitting a bug report to Gmail?  And if that doesn't get you
anywhere, start using a decent email client instead?

Anyhow, any progress with your font-locking stuff?

> Sincerely and kindest regards, Davin.
> Davin Pearson    http://www.davinpearson.com

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).