From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Stefan Monnier Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.help Subject: Re: line-move-visual Date: Thu, 10 Jun 2010 09:43:46 -0400 Message-ID: References: <87pr07qjio.fsf@thinkpad.tsdh.de> <878w6vq7ew.fsf@thinkpad.tsdh.de> <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> NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: dough.gmane.org 1291830815 6611 80.91.229.12 (8 Dec 2010 17:53:35 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@dough.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 8 Dec 2010 17:53:35 +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 18:53:30 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 1PQOCm-0007ke-Lp for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Wed, 08 Dec 2010 18:53:28 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1]:35847 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1PQOCm-0007od-5S for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Wed, 08 Dec 2010 12:53:28 -0500 Original-Path: usenet.stanford.edu!postnews.google.com!news2.google.com!npeer01.iad.highwinds-media.com!news.highwinds-media.com!feed-me.highwinds-media.com!post02.iad.highwinds-media.com!newsfe01.iad.POSTED!7564ea0f!not-for-mail Original-Newsgroups: gnu.emacs.help,comp.emacs,comp.lang.lisp User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/24.0.50 (gnu/linux) Cancel-Lock: sha1:BuvzMMSCUXxFXmoGXju5au9NhHE= Original-Lines: 47 Original-X-Complaints-To: abuse@UsenetServer.com Original-NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 10 Jun 2010 13:43:52 UTC Original-Xref: usenet.stanford.edu gnu.emacs.help:178797 comp.emacs:99973 comp.lang.lisp:288899 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:75736 Archived-At: > The thinking behind the line-move-visual decision went something like > this. If C-n moves by logical lines then the new users would be > confused. If it moves by visual lines then the experienced users would > be bothered. But we have a flag whereby experienced users can revert to > the old behavior. The new users won't know enough to set a flag. So, > let us go with the default that helps out the new users. See this > thread for example: Choosing defaults is very difficult indeed. You can never please everyone. In this specific case, I'm the main guy to blame: I wrote the original patch for line-move-visual (oddly enough, since it touches parts of the code I still am not at all familiar with), mostly because it seemed it would be important for proper support of word-wrap (which I didn't care for much, but many users cared about it). After writing the patch, I tried it out, mostly for debugging purposes, and much to my surprise I discovered that I actually liked it. Yes, it occasionally doesn't do what I want, but in practice, it does what I want more often than the previous case: - when no line wraps, it either makes no difference, or it works slightly better because it correctly accounts for variable-pitch fonts. - when lines are long (typically the "single-line paragraph" text coming from people who either use word-wrap or longlines-mode or an editor that behaves similarly, but can also happen in many other cases like binary files, or mechanically-generated files), the new behavior is much better (how did you move to "that spot I see about 10 visual-lines down from point" in a single logical line in previous Emacsen?). - when the buffer mostly fits without wrapping, except for a few exceptions, then yes, the new behavior is less good for those wrapped-lines. In my particular case, such lines are usually (very minor) bugs anyway, so it's not that important, but I understand that some people get annoyed. And of course, if you use C-100 C-n instead of M-g M-g 100 RET to move to the line 100 (I personally use C-s 100 instead ;-), you'll be disappointed, and if you use keyboard macros you'll also be disappointed. Depending on your particular circumstances, the second case will only rarely happen whereas the third will be very common, so you'll be really annoyed. Sorry about that. Please (setq line-move-visual nil) in your .emacs and/or try to come up with some idea how we could keep the advantages in cases 1 and 2 without suffering in case 3. Stefan