From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: "Drew Adams" Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: RE: shouldn't `delete-blank-lines' treat form-feed as whitespace? Date: Wed, 3 Mar 2010 22:21:12 -0800 Message-ID: References: <4CB6D99021EF440EAB10FFDB2740FE8B@us.oracle.com><4B8ED635.7010102@harpegolden.net> <87635cq2yy.fsf@catnip.gol.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: dough.gmane.org 1267684464 27397 80.91.229.12 (4 Mar 2010 06:34:24 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@dough.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 4 Mar 2010 06:34:24 +0000 (UTC) Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org To: "'Miles Bader'" , "'David De La Harpe Golden'" Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Thu Mar 04 07:34:19 2010 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([199.232.76.165]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1Nn4dV-000606-LI for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Thu, 04 Mar 2010 07:34:19 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1]:51383 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1Nn4dT-0003RZ-GG for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Thu, 04 Mar 2010 01:34:15 -0500 Original-Received: from mailman by lists.gnu.org with tmda-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1Nn4RY-0007Eu-97 for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 04 Mar 2010 01:21:56 -0500 Original-Received: from [140.186.70.92] (port=57677 helo=eggs.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1Nn4RV-0007EQ-NI for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 04 Mar 2010 01:21:55 -0500 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1Nn4RQ-00042L-9Y for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 04 Mar 2010 01:21:48 -0500 Original-Received: from rcsinet11.oracle.com ([148.87.113.123]:64727) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1Nn4RI-00041X-RK; Thu, 04 Mar 2010 01:21:40 -0500 Original-Received: from acsinet15.oracle.com (acsinet15.oracle.com [141.146.126.227]) by rcsinet11.oracle.com (Switch-3.4.2/Switch-3.4.2) with ESMTP id o246LaKa019666 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA bits=256 verify=OK); Thu, 4 Mar 2010 06:21:37 GMT Original-Received: from acsmt355.oracle.com (acsmt355.oracle.com [141.146.40.155]) by acsinet15.oracle.com (Switch-3.4.2/Switch-3.4.1) with ESMTP id o2468teE025898; Thu, 4 Mar 2010 06:21:35 GMT Original-Received: from abhmt016.oracle.com by acsmt355.oracle.com with ESMTP id 59166671267683674; Wed, 03 Mar 2010 22:21:14 -0800 Original-Received: from dradamslap1 (/10.175.217.141) by default (Oracle Beehive Gateway v4.0) with ESMTP ; Wed, 03 Mar 2010 22:21:14 -0800 X-Mailer: Microsoft Office Outlook 11 In-Reply-To: <87635cq2yy.fsf@catnip.gol.com> Thread-Index: Acq7O6IRz2cHKbmnRgG7DolF4RdFEQAJagHA X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2900.5579 X-Source-IP: acsmt355.oracle.com [141.146.40.155] X-Auth-Type: Internal IP X-CT-RefId: str=0001.0A090206.4B8F5170.0022:SCFMA4539814,ss=1,fgs=0 X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: GNU/Linux 2.6 (newer, 3) X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Original-Sender: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:121635 Archived-At: > > While it's logically formally a whitespace class character, > > I'm quite unconvinced it would "feel right" to me. > > formfeed is usually put in much more rarely and with more > > forethought than space/tab/newline. > > Yes I agree -- the formfeed character, when it is used, is > for document structuring; it's not "whitespace" in the normal > sense. It's sort of like the next-level above newline in a hierarchy. > > This suggests that perhaps there should be a command > `delete-blank-pages', which would delete pages containing only blank > lines (including the terminating formfeed). > > [Drew, wouldn't the latter command address your use?] Dunno. I hadn't really thought that much about this all 'round. I was just thinking that in some sense (contexts) \f-only lines are blank. Obviously, for any given bit of code (context), one can easily delete the whitespace or non-whitespace one wants - no special need for a ready-made function to do that. So no, I don't think we need a `delete-blank-pages' function. And we probably don't need to have `delete-blank-lines' always treat \f (or always \n or \t..., for that matter) as whitespace. I guess I was thinking either (a) `delete-blank-lines' should generally delete \f-only lines also or (b) we might add an optional arg to `delete-blank-lines', to tell it what we mean by "blank" at the point of call. I agree now that (a) is not a great idea. (b) is probably not very useful either. Chalk this up to (piddling) thinking out loud.