Editing of invisible text

Editing of invisible text

[Lennart Borgman]

Emacs lets you edit invisible text. That is perhaps not bad, but it is
bad that you can't see what you are doing when you are editing
invisible text. Here is a suggestion on how to make this better:

- Implement a minor mode that make all invisible text visible but with
a special face (or background color) that tells the user this is
really invisible text.

- Ask the user if she/he want to turn on this minor mode for the
buffer when invisible text is going to be changed.

- Of course add a variable to override this behaviour when needed ;-)

Re: Editing of invisible text

[Stefan Monnier]

> Emacs lets you edit invisible text. That is perhaps not bad, but it is
> bad that you can't see what you are doing when you are editing
> invisible text. Here is a suggestion on how to make this better:

> - Implement a minor mode that make all invisible text visible but with
> a special face (or background color) that tells the user this is
> really invisible text.

> - Ask the user if she/he want to turn on this minor mode for the
> buffer when invisible text is going to be changed.

> - Of course add a variable to override this behaviour when needed ;-)

I'm not sure which scenario you have in mind, but:
- editing invisible text is not a normal occurrence, since point is
  normally moved outside of compositions, images, and invisible text
  at the end of every toplevel command.
- reveal-mode was meant as a way to do just what you want (tho it was
  also meant as a way to use outline-minor-mode differently and this
  is how it evolved more than as a way to handle editing of invisible
  text).


-- Stefan