bug#18589: Why is the the longlines package obsolete?

[Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>]

> In my case, I managed to make longlines-mode wrap text while not wrapping
> equations (LaTeX-mode).

It would be interesting to extend visual-lines-mode so you can prevent
wrapping of some lines (or prevent wrapping at particular places, as is
done with fill-nobreak-functions).

> I also got it to indent wrapped lines correctly.

adaptive-wrap-mode is another approach at indenting wrapped lines
correctly (but for visual-lines-mode).  I don't guarantee it works well
for LaTeX, tho (I don't think it uses the indent-according-to-mode code,
but rather uses the adaptive-fill-mode code).

> I understand this is a very specific hack, and doesn't justify unobsoleting
> the package. But for the record, the code can be found here.
> http://endlessparentheses.com/longlines-mode-in-latex.html

I wouldn't mind de-obsoleting it.  If you're interested, I think it
would be nice to change longlines.el by adding some hooks to it so you
can cleanly make it work like you do (without overwriting its functions).
Feel like taking over maintainership?


        Stefan


PS: BTW, I don't understand why people want to use
single-line-paragraphs for "LaTeX under version control".  It means that
any change to a paragraph will always appear in the diff as a change to
the whole paragraph, rather than just to the specific line on which the
change happened.  Of course, refilling a paragraph may cause the whole
paragraph to show up in the diff, but as long as you only refill when
you make changes, it's never worse than the "single-line
paragraphs" approach.  And `diff-refine-hunk' lets you see which part of
the paragraph was really changed.