From: "Richard M. Stallman" <rms@gnu.org>
Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org
Subject: Re: Beginingless paragraphs
Date: Sun, 04 Sep 2005 12:49:38 -0400 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <E1EBxgY-0002D8-CW@fencepost.gnu.org> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.3.96.1050903121625.302A-100000@acm.acm> (message from Alan Mackenzie on Sat, 3 Sep 2005 12:26:23 +0000 (GMT))
Overall, the change is good, but there are many details that should be
done differently.
I've worked out just what's been bugging me, and that's the definition of
`paragraph-start': It suggests (though it doesn't quite explicitly say)
that paragraph-start matches the start of _every_ paragraph. This isn't
true - any line following a separator line is the start of a paragraph.
That is true, but paragraph-start does have a match at or just before
the start of every paragraph. THat's because it is supposed to match
separator lines, too.
OK, here's my first shot at a patch: As a matter of interest, what's
this node doing in "Searching and Matching"?
Because that's where regexps are.
! This section describes the regular expressions Emacs uses to
! recognize pages, paragraphs, and sentences. By setting these
! variables appropriately, the Elisp programmer can control the precise
Please write "Emacs Lisp".
! @table @asis
! @cindex page
! @item Pages
@defvar page-delimiter
! This is the regular expression describing line-beginnings that
! separate pages. The default value is @code{"^\014"} (i.e.,
Using @defvar inside of @table is a peculiar thing to do.
It may look bad in TeX or in Makeinfo.
! This is the regular expression describing line-beginnings that
"Describing" is vague; what it does is match them.
! Buffers divide into @dfn{paragraphs},
That is a strange way to put it. It sounds like you're saying that
buffers actually split up. It would be better to make this
parallel to the info about pages.
! normally don't overlap@footnote{It is possible for a blank line to be
! both the last line of one paragraph and the first line of the next.}.
Are you sure? I don't think so. A blank line would normally
be a separator line, not the first or last line of any paragraph.
! This regular expression recognizes a line which starts a paragraph
! when the previous line is not a separator. It need only match some
! portion beginning at the line's left margin (@pxref{Margins for
! Filling}), not the whole line. It must also be set up to recognize a
! separator line.
I think this way of putting it is less clear than the the current way:
that it should match lines that either start or separate paragraphs.
+ The two variant forms of paragraph breaks are:
+
+ @table @asis
+ @item Paragraph break without separator lines
+ Any line, apart from a separator line, which @code{paragraph-start}
+ recognizes starts a new paragraph.
+
+ @item Paragraph break with separator lines
+ One or more separator lines split the old paragraph from the new one.
+ Whether @code{paragraph-start} would also recognize the first line of
+ the new paragraph is irrelevant.
+ @end table
Itemizing these two is a good idea (but you should use @itemize, not
@table). However, calling them "variant forms" is confusing.
I suggest calling them "two ways that paragraphs can be separated".
Also I suggest swapping them, because the first one is the usual case
and the simplest case to understand.
+
+ As a heuristic feature,
The phrase "heuristic feature" does not make sense to me.
if a line tentatively recognized as the
+ start of a paragraph follows a whitespace line, the whitespace line
+ becomes the start of the paragraph instead.
That is a confusing way to put it. It's clearer to say "is included in the
paragraph" than "becomes the start of the paragraph".
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2005-09-04 16:49 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 20+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2005-08-30 10:50 Beginingless paragraphs Alan Mackenzie
2005-08-30 11:48 ` Benjamin Riefenstahl
2005-08-31 14:36 ` Richard M. Stallman
2005-08-31 17:00 ` Eli Zaretskii
2005-08-31 18:11 ` Alan Mackenzie
2005-09-01 15:53 ` Richard M. Stallman
2005-09-01 17:56 ` Alan Mackenzie
2005-09-01 23:17 ` Thien-Thi Nguyen
2005-09-03 1:42 ` Richard M. Stallman
2005-09-03 1:41 ` Richard M. Stallman
2005-09-03 12:26 ` Alan Mackenzie
2005-09-04 16:49 ` Richard M. Stallman [this message]
2005-09-07 19:17 ` Beginingless paragraphs: second stab at a patch Alan Mackenzie
2005-09-08 9:04 ` Richard M. Stallman
2005-10-19 16:56 ` Clean-up of forward-paragraph [Re: Beginingless paragraphs: second stab at a patch.] Alan Mackenzie
2005-10-20 4:54 ` Richard M. Stallman
2005-10-20 13:53 ` Alan Mackenzie
2005-10-21 4:50 ` Richard M. Stallman
2005-10-21 20:09 ` Alan Mackenzie
2005-10-22 15:51 ` Richard M. Stallman
Reply instructions:
You may reply publicly to this message via plain-text email
using any one of the following methods:
* Save the following mbox file, import it into your mail client,
and reply-to-all from there: mbox
Avoid top-posting and favor interleaved quoting:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#Interleaved_style
* Reply using the --to, --cc, and --in-reply-to
switches of git-send-email(1):
git send-email \
--in-reply-to=E1EBxgY-0002D8-CW@fencepost.gnu.org \
--to=rms@gnu.org \
--cc=emacs-devel@gnu.org \
/path/to/YOUR_REPLY
https://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-send-email.html
* If your mail client supports setting the In-Reply-To header
via mailto: links, try the mailto: link
Be sure your reply has a Subject: header at the top and a blank line
before the message body.
Code repositories for project(s) associated with this external index
https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/emacs.git
https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/emacs/org-mode.git
This is an external index of several public inboxes,
see mirroring instructions on how to clone and mirror
all data and code used by this external index.