Re: comments in cc mode

[Michael <mmassmann@econ.vu.nl>]

Dear Alan,

On May 22, 11:43 am, Alan Mackenzie <a...@muc.de> wrote:
> Hi, Michael,
>
> "Massmann, M. (Michael)" <mmassm...@feweb.vu.nl> wrote:
>
> > Dear Andreas,
> > Many thanks for this. Could you point me to the documentation for the
> > options available for comment-style? After playing around with some of
> > them I did not get the desired effect.
> > I also had a look at cc-mode's `c-indent-comment-alist' and set every
> > single entry to `column' and `nil', so as to have the default column
> > (ie 100) apply, no matter what the surrounding syntax is. The variable
> > `c-indent-comments-syntactically-p' I set to nil so that it does not
> > override the previous settings.
> > This seems to have the desired effect that when I press M-; to insert a
> > *new* comment on a line, empty or not, the comment indeed starts in
> > column 100.
> > Yet when I press M-; to re-align an *existing* comment, the entire
> > comment is moved to a column other than 100 in 9 out of 10 cases.
> > Any advice on how to rectify this problem would be appreciated. Thanks!
>
> I've just gone through `comment-dwim' in edebug (the Emacs debugger), and
> it seems like comments are being made to fit within `fill-column'.  I
> don't know why this is being done, but could you try setting it to a high
> value, say
>
>     (setq fill-column 150)
>
> .  Does this solve the immediate problem?  Does it introduce any new
> problems?
>
> > Regards,
> > Michael
>
> --
> Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).

Many thanks for your suggestion! This was precisely what was going
pear-shaped. I did have my fill-column at 150 to start with, but some
of my comments were more than 50 characters long, and they seem to
have been shifted left such that they ended on column 150. I have now
increased fill-column to 200 and everything works beautifully.

One more question if I may: is there an easy way to tell Emacs to
automatically set fill-column to 200 when in cc-mode and to leave it
at 150 otherwise (eg when loading auctex)? Column 200 is off my screen
and it is only with code comments that this doesn't bother me.

Thanks again for your help,
Michael