Re: M-x indent-region not working (?)

[kai.grossjohann@gmx.net (Kai Großjohann)]

"Stefan Monnier" <monnier+gnu.emacs.help/news/@flint.cs.yale.edu> writes:

> I suspect it still won't be of much use: it's difficult to know what
> indent-region should do in text-mode anyway.

Well, there was talk about indent-region doing like TAB on each
line.  That's a pretty good behavior even when TAB is bound to
indent-relative.

The above is fairly obvious for the case when all lines are
flush-left to begin with, but for programming languages indentation
can also mean to shift towards the left, which indent-relative
doesn't do.

Hm.

Here is an algorithm that describes useful behavior for indent-region
together with indent-relative as the indentation function.  It
assumes that the region does not start or end in the middle of a line.

    * Go to beginning of first line in region.

    * Do back-to-indentation.

    * Remember current column.  Do indent-relative.  Now look by how
      many columns point has moved and call that number of columns N.

    * Do indent-rigidly on the other lines in the region, specifying
      N as ARG (the number of columns to indent).

I guess that this behavior does not fit into the current
indent-region framework.  Hm.
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