From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Xah Lee Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.help Subject: Re: linefeed ^L symbol Date: Tue, 11 Dec 2007 13:09:12 -0800 (PST) Organization: http://groups.google.com Message-ID: <50896d4b-9f5a-4368-bfed-f5f7296d11ef@t1g2000pra.googlegroups.com> References: NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-2022-JP Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1197409381 28025 80.91.229.12 (11 Dec 2007 21:43:01 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 11 Dec 2007 21:43:01 +0000 (UTC) To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org Original-X-From: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Tue Dec 11 22:43:13 2007 Return-path: Envelope-to: geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([199.232.76.165]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.50) id 1J2Crp-0003NL-BI for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Tue, 11 Dec 2007 22:42:17 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1] helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1J2CrX-0005pb-Hp for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Tue, 11 Dec 2007 16:41:59 -0500 Original-Path: shelby.stanford.edu!newsfeed.stanford.edu!postnews.google.com!t1g2000pra.googlegroups.com!not-for-mail Original-Newsgroups: gnu.emacs.help Original-Lines: 57 Original-NNTP-Posting-Host: 69.236.67.2 Original-X-Trace: posting.google.com 1197407352 8640 127.0.0.1 (11 Dec 2007 21:09:12 GMT) Original-X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Original-NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 11 Dec 2007 21:09:12 +0000 (UTC) Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Injection-Info: t1g2000pra.googlegroups.com; posting-host=69.236.67.2; posting-account=qPxGtQkAAADb6PWdLGiWVucht1ZDR6fn User-Agent: G2/1.0 X-HTTP-UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/523.12 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0.4 Safari/523.12, gzip(gfe), gzip(gfe) Original-Xref: shelby.stanford.edu gnu.emacs.help:154594 X-BeenThere: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Original-Sender: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Errors-To: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.help:50020 Archived-At: Tyler Smith: <> The "^L" char is form feed (ascii 12). It is not the unix newline char (which is line feed, ^J, ascii 10). During the 1980s or early 1990s, the form feed char basically functions as page break marker. It is still what emacs uses it for. However, after 2 decades of computing industry changes, using the form feed char for page break in source code is no longer widely practiced. Emacs still uses it so because emacs did not take particular effort to modernize. (modernize here means to adopt changing situation (usually for the better), as opposed to following fashions and trends) In emacs, you can jump to next ^L by pressing "Ctrl+x ]" and previosu by "Ctrl+x [". By tradition, elisp code still uses it to indicate a code page break. (not sure if this is mentioned or recommended in emacs coding style guide, or how frequent it is used in existing elisp files) For more detail on this, please see: * Why Emacs's Keyboard Shortcuts Are Painful http://xahlee.org/emacs/emacs_kb_shortcuts_pain.html * The Confusion of Emacs's Keystroke Representation http://xahlee.org/emacs/keystroke_rep.html Xah xah@xahlee.org $B-t(B http://xahlee.org/ On Dec 11, 8:41 am, Tyler Smith wrote: > Hi, > > I've just reinstalled Emacs 22.1 from source on Debian Lenny. I notice > now that ^L shows up here and there, presumably where a newline should > be. Does this mean I've messed something up something in the config? I > shouldn't be seeing escape characters like this should I? > > Examples: > From the Paragraph Start customize variable window: > Paragraph Start: Hide Value \|[ ]*$\|.* wrote:$\|.* wrote:$ > > The actual value of this variable is: > "\f\\|[ ]*$\\|.* wrote:$\\|.* wrote:$\\|.* wrote:$\\|.* wrote:$" > > I'm also confused as to why I should have \f in there to begin with, > since I think Unix-like systems use \n instead? > > Thanks for any clarification, > > Tyler