From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Uday S Reddy Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.help Subject: Re: line-move-visual Date: Tue, 15 Jun 2010 12:29:27 +0100 Organization: Janet Usenet Reading Service. Message-ID: References: <871vcmhq79.fsf@wivenhoe.ul.ie> <580d5f23-e251-483f-9752-7e77b1ca2fb7@40g2000pry.googlegroups.com> <2a7dc148-e2cc-4681-9d8c-ccd1140aa6d7@j36g2000prj.googlegroups.com> <089883ee-0a63-4cb4-a0ec-d2fe4e71cc03@y18g2000prn.googlegroups.com> <87wruco5yq.fsf@lola.goethe.zz> <87wrubfd8p.fsf@rapttech.com.au> <848w6ndwn0.fsf@cs.bham.ac.uk> <87y6ekevet.fsf@rapttech.com.au> <87bpbgq32f.fsf@unm.edu> <87hbl857xp.fsf@kzsu.stanford.edu> <87pqzvd7yx.fsf@rapttech.com.au> <87d3vuo2zv.fsf@rapttech.com.au> <87d3vs4ppr.fsf@rapttech.com.au> NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: dough.gmane.org 1291834999 28241 80.91.229.12 (8 Dec 2010 19:03:19 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@dough.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 8 Dec 2010 19:03:19 +0000 (UTC) To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org Original-X-From: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Wed Dec 08 20:03:15 2010 Return-path: Envelope-to: geh-help-gnu-emacs@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 1PQPIE-00059t-G7 for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Wed, 08 Dec 2010 20:03:10 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1]:38586 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1PQPID-0003sL-Rr for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Wed, 08 Dec 2010 14:03:09 -0500 Original-Path: usenet.stanford.edu!newsfeed.esat.net!feeder.news.heanet.ie!feed4.jnfs.ja.net!feed2.jnfs.ja.net!jnfs.ja.net!times.reader.netnews.ja.net!not-for-mail Original-Newsgroups: gnu.emacs.help Original-Lines: 110 Original-NNTP-Posting-Host: gromit.cs.bham.ac.uk Original-X-Trace: north.jnrs.ja.net 1276601372 1575 147.188.193.16 (15 Jun 2010 11:29:32 GMT) Original-X-Complaints-To: usenet@north.jnrs.ja.net Original-NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 15 Jun 2010 11:29:32 +0000 (UTC) User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.9) Gecko/20100317 Thunderbird/3.0.4 In-Reply-To: <87d3vs4ppr.fsf@rapttech.com.au> Original-Xref: usenet.stanford.edu gnu.emacs.help:178958 X-BeenThere: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Original-Sender: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Errors-To: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.help:75848 Archived-At: On 6/15/2010 10:20 AM, Tim X wrote: > I still don't understand the question you referred to when you wrote > > "When I asked "do you want C-n to move by logical line or visual line in > the logical line mode", the gallery has been silent." > > Perhaps I don't understand what you mean by logical line mode. My > interpretation was that logical line mode referred to what some would > call the 'traditional' default mode that emacs had until v23 i.e. C-n and Cp > moved to the next and previous lines where a line would be defined by > standard eol characters. By "logical line mode," I meant the state of Emacs whenever visual-line-mode is nil. When you fire up Emacs with 'emacs -Q', it is in this mode. This is not standard terminology. It is something I made up to describe the situation we expect to have when Emacs is not in visual-line-mode. By your terminology, "logical line mode" existed in Emacs 22, but it doesn't exist in Emacs 23. When you fire up 'emacs -Q' you get some kind of an "emacs default mode with a funny mixture of logical and visual lines". From this point of view, the problem is more simply stated: the Emacs default is not logical line mode any more. > So, I still don't understand your question and I suspect I'm not alone. > This could explain the lack of response to your question and provides an > alternative to your rather negative and somewhat arrogant assertion > regarding an 'ill informed gallery'. A failure to illicit a response to > a question can easily be due to the way it is presented and does not in > itself tell you anything about the audience. Sorry, arrogance was not my intent. The reason for calling the people that gave positive feedback "ill informed" is that either they don't realize that they can get the behavior they want by setting line-move-visual to t or they don't understand that things can break in unforeseen ways by changing the default behavior. I was myself "ill informed" in this sense until this thread started. So, if I happened to give positive feedback on this issue, it would have been worth nothing. > To again make my position clear. I believe that setting line-move-visual > to t by default was a mistake. I believe the introduction of the ability > to change the semantics of line movement is a good addition, despite some > of the negative consequences and the fact that I think there is still > some work to be done to handle things like macros in a reliable > consistent manner. This ability to change the movement semantics has > enabled improved support for a number of activities, many of which have > been mentioned elsewhere in this thread. I agree that its introduction > does come with some pain, but I think its worth it. From a theoretical > basis, I can see where some of the concerns are coming from, but I've > yet to hear of an actual example where the change has caused the > cataclysmic disasters that have been predicted. I think despite some > valid points, things have been over stated. I think we agree on all of this. However, I don't think I predicted "cataclysmic disasters". I only said that file corruption is possible. Whether it actually happens or not depends on how much code or macro collection is out there in circulation which uses `next-line'. As a developer, I avoid the possibility of file corruption at all cost. I don't expect myself to be proved or disproved about cataclysmic disasters. Perhaps my more important point is that, if we intend for Emacs to continue as a dependable system component (as opposed to a personal text editor), these kinds of incompatible changes should not be made. > Which brings me to my final issue and the one that actually dragged me > into this thread. The arrogance, derogatory comments about the emacs > maintainers, sweeping generalizations and assumptions regarding > everything from their personal motivations, experience, egos and even > age has been quite outrageous. Arrogant claims of teaching them lessons > and demands for more accountability etc have been over the top and all > of this due essentially to one poor decision to change the default > behavior. There has been no recognition for all the recent improvements > in font handling, support for GTK, dbus, etc, X window support > enhancements, emacsclient improvements, improved and extended support > for different character encodings, support for larger buffers and much > more. I'm quite amazed at the development and improvements we have been > seeing. Remember how slow it was to go from emacs 20 to 21? Remember the > constant frustrations of an emacs that frequently ran into limitations > that other systems didn't experience? I think the work that has been > done over the last few years has been quite remarkable. On this, we disagree. To set the record straight, neither I nor anybody else has used the phrase "teaching them a lesson" which has a very different meaning. I have talked about taking a lesson, which is something smart people do throughout their lives, by learning from experience and users' feedback. Nothing derogatory was intended here. Anybody who thinks that they don't need a lesson every now and then are probably arrogant themselves! I haven't made any comments on Mark Crispin's language or etiquette. Neither have I made such comments about anybody else. My feeling is that it is a waste of time to talk about etiquette on newsgroups. We are all adults and we are not going to change our behaviour patterns just because somebody commented on it in a newsgroup. It is much more productive to focus on the substance and the issues, and try to figure out what is being talked about rather than how it is talked about. If you want to acclaim the great progress being made in Emacs, please by all means start a thread and we will all join in. But you can't fault us for not doing it in this thread which has a particular purpose, to discuss line-move-visual. --- I wrote my last message to essentially sum up the discussion of this thread, which has been rather long by all standards. I don't intend to prolong it further unless anybody comes up with some reasons for why the current default setting was good idea. Cheers, Uday