Re: Overlay mechanic improvements

[David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org>]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

> [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
> [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
> [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
>
>       Supporting after/before_string with text properties would be
>     really weird as inserting text in the middle of some text with the
>     respective properties would cause those strings to appear ex nihilo.
>
> That is true -- but does it matter, given that inserting text there is
> a mistake anyway?

Inserting a text in the middle of the text underlying a preview-latex
image is not a mistake but the intended mode of operation.  I think you
are fundamentally misunderstanding what preview-latex is.  It is a
previewing mode that previews selected elements (like math) of
typesetting a LaTeX document right in the source code so that you do not
need to keep switching your focus between source code and preview window
when proofreading/deriving your math.

The whole point is to work with an editable source and have the images
as a transient view.  In order to make movement unsurprising, only some
movement commands (like cursor left/right) will actually disable the
move-out-of-images-in-the-main-loop behavior of Emacs in order to "open"
images and display the source: most commands will avoid the inside of
images in the way Emacs usually does.  But that does not extend to any
_modifying_ commands or to isearch.  And of course not to macro
execution.

-- 
David Kastrup