From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Alan Mackenzie Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: Beginingless paragraphs Date: Wed, 31 Aug 2005 18:11:56 +0000 (GMT) Message-ID: References: NNTP-Posting-Host: main.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII X-Trace: sea.gmane.org 1125512984 18973 80.91.229.2 (31 Aug 2005 18:29:44 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@sea.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 31 Aug 2005 18:29:44 +0000 (UTC) Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Wed Aug 31 20:29:37 2005 Return-path: Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([199.232.76.165]) by ciao.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1EAXJ1-00067t-Ng for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Wed, 31 Aug 2005 20:27:28 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1] helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1EAXND-0004Tb-F2 for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Wed, 31 Aug 2005 14:31:47 -0400 Original-Received: from mailman by lists.gnu.org with tmda-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1EAXJ9-0001bB-Ug for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Wed, 31 Aug 2005 14:27:36 -0400 Original-Received: from exim by lists.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1EAXH8-0000u6-0R for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Wed, 31 Aug 2005 14:25:40 -0400 Original-Received: from [199.232.76.173] (helo=monty-python.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1EAXH5-0000mR-IU for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Wed, 31 Aug 2005 14:25:27 -0400 Original-Received: from [193.149.49.134] (helo=acm.acm) by monty-python.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.34) id 1EAX2V-0005UU-Jh; Wed, 31 Aug 2005 14:10:24 -0400 Original-Received: from localhost (root@localhost) by acm.acm (8.8.8/8.8.8) with SMTP id SAA00421; Wed, 31 Aug 2005 18:11:56 GMT X-Sender: root@acm.acm Original-To: "Richard M. Stallman" In-Reply-To: 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:42535 Archived-At: Hi, Emacs! On Wed, 31 Aug 2005, Richard M. Stallman wrote: > What is a "paragraph" in Emacs? I can't find a @dfn{paragraph} > anywhere in the Emacs/Elisp manuals. >Do we need one? Certainly in the Emacs Lisp manual we don't. >It is a high-level concept used in just a few user-level commands. I disagree most strongly here. Hackers need to know how to set up paragraph-s\(tart\|eparate\) so that they can make the canonical paragraph commands behave the way they want them to. For example, I was tearing my hair out in frustration a couple of years back, trying to get the sentence/paragraph movement and filling stuff to work properly in CC Mode. (Comment prefixes and escaped newlines in strings complicate things.) In the end, I had to edebugger my way through forward-paragraph to get a handle on things. For another example, it would be nice if M-q in a Shell Script mode comment would regard a line like "# " as a blank line (i.e. paragraph separator). (Maybe this has already been done for 22.1 - if so, apologies.) This would be easier, I think, with a clear definition of a paragraph. I think it would be far easier to understand a description like "The paragraph functions recognise the start of a paragraph as and the end of a paragraph as ." than the ones saying "p-start matches ...." and "p-separate matches ...". >Defining paragraphs better might be useful in the Emacs Manual. I think they should either be properly defined there or the references to paragraph-s\(tart\|eparate\) replaced by an xref to a description in the Elisp manual. The logical absurdity ("beginningless paragraphs") implicit in the manual surely should be sorted out one way or the other. >Would this really make a difference for users, though? I am not sure. >Right now the manual effectively takes for granted that users know what >a paragraph is. Is this a problem? I think Users will know exactly what a paragraph is until they've seen the descriptions of paragraph-start and paragraph-separate, after which they'll not be so sure any more. ;-) ######################################################################### Looking at @node "Standard Regexps" in Elisp's searching.texi, perhaps the node's title should be amended. What does "Standard Regular Expressions used in Editing" really say? Well, "Standard" and "used in Editing" both seem content-free, so all the title really means is "A few regexps". The four regexps documented on this page all define chunks of natural-language text: paragraphs, pages and sentences. So how about renaming this @section something like "Sentences, Paragraphs and Pages", and making the focus of the @node the definition of these things in terms of the regexps, rather than the regexps themselves? It goes without saying, I'm ready and willing to make these amendments myself. -- Alan Mackenzie (Munich, Germany)