message-mode, itemization, filling, and undo

message-mode, itemization, filling, and undo

[Amy Templeton]

Hi,

Quick question. So I use Gnus to compose mail, with message-mode as the
actual mail-writing mode of choice. There is one thing that seems a bit odd
to me, though...

Normally, "undo"-ing is not a problem in these buffers. However, I often
need to itemize things in them, and sometimes these are full sentences.

- This is an example of the sort of thing you might expect to see. A couple
  of sentences,
- Followed by another bullet with more sentences.

However, sometimes if I go back and edit one that's further up, without
thinking I'll press M-q ("fill-paragraph") to, well, fill it. However, I'll
end up with something like this:

- This is an example of the sort of thing you might expect to see. A couple
- of sentences or something, - Followed by another bullet with more
- sentences. - But now it's messed up and oddly filled and this tends to be
- a problem because...

...all of a sudden it starts complaining that there is no further undo
information, even if I've, say, just typed a new letter, and refuses to undo
*anything* in that buffer ever again (then I send the message and
everything's fine the next time I start composing). This is especially
annoying in that I can't undo the mis-filling of the bullets and have to do
so by hand.

Any idea on what's causing this or how to fix it?

Thanks,
Amy

-- 
Beauty is truth, truth beauty, that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
                -- John Keats

Re: message-mode, itemization, filling, and undo

[Patricia J. Hawkins]

>>>>> "AT" == Amy Templeton <amy.g.templeton@gmail.com> writes:

AT> - This is an example of the sort of thing you might expect to see. A couple
AT>   of sentences,
AT> - Followed by another bullet with more sentences.

AT> However, sometimes if I go back and edit one that's further up,
AT> without thinking I'll press M-q ("fill-paragraph") to, well, fill
AT> it. However, I'll end up with something like this:

AT> - This is an example of the sort of thing you might expect to see. A couple
AT> - of sentences or something, - Followed by another bullet with more
AT> - sentences. - But now it's messed up and oddly filled and this tends to be
AT> - a problem because...

Something is screwy with adaptive-fill-mode or adaptive-fill-regexp,
this fill should just work.

Have you changed any of the defaults?

Make sure that adaptive-fill-mode is t, and that adaptive-fill-regexp
is set to something sane (mine is "[ 	]*\\([-!|#%;>*·•‣⁃◦]+[ 	]*\\)*"
Should be the default, at least up to Gnu Emacs 23.0.0.1.

AT> ...all of a sudden it starts complaining that there is no further
AT> undo information, even if I've, say, just typed a new letter, and
AT> refuses to undo *anything* in that buffer ever again (then I send
AT> the message and everything's fine the next time I start
AT> composing). This is especially annoying in that I can't undo the
AT> mis-filling of the bullets and have to do so by hand.

Try M-x list-load-path-shadows to see if you're loading incompatible
versions of anything.

You're running a bleeding-edge version of emacs -- try grabbing a new
snapshot and see if the problem goes away.


-- 
Patricia J. Hawkins
Hawkins Internet Applications
www.hawkinsia.com