Re: line-move-visual

[Scot Becker <scot.becker@gmail.com>]

@ Johan

Yes, thanks for stirring up this conversation.

I would have thought that 'the goal here' should be conceived as a
third option: making both linewise and paragraph-wise work possible,
each in its appropriate setting (or for the users who want it). In
coding, working linewise makes the most sense.  In writing natural
language texts, it's an unsemantic cludge, which we made work for a
while.  (We still need to output hardwrapped paragraphs for certain
purposes, but that can be a matter of export.)

It makes sense that many people want to see a dual default.  Code
should work linewise, unless you don't want it to, text should
soft-wrap (as with v-l-m), except when you don't want it to.  The
current default doesn't do that AFAIK, and you're not the only one
that doesn't like that.

So the introduction of visual-line-mode and line-move-visual is (I
don't think) intended to move towards any new mental model, but rather
to make a new one possible.  Exactly how the defaults are set up is a
separate matter.  Some (like me) will like a dual default, depending
on the mode.  Others will want consistent behaviour across modes.
Since the options will be there for either, we need ways to make it
easy for the user to identify what they want, where they want it, and
to understand any implications of their choices they may not easily
think of.  That can be done with good purpose-written documentation,
or with some kind of assisted settings modification mechanism like the
'custom' customize buffers which Lennnart has hacked up.

@Lennart,

I like it.  It could be a matter of my Emacs installation
(emacs-snapshot on ubuntu) but the Info link doesn't go through to
"Easy Customization", though I have the node.  Likewise the links to
the cua-mode function, give the error "You didn't specify a function."
 Otherwise, the new version seems like it would work for assembling
custom lists of settings for users to consider.

Thanks also for drawing our attention to
      (custom-add-to-group 'my-group 'my-variable 'custom-variable))
This seems like another way to accomplish something similar, if I'm
not mistaken.

Scot