Re: HowTo: Run a hook when a buffer becomes "current"

[raman <raman@google.com>]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:
I just sent a short follow-up to Karl's note, but here is a more
detailed explanation.


I'm implementing  myself something I'm calling "SoundScapes" --I'm
building it within  Emacspeak but it may well be useful more generally.

I got tired of having to listen to text-to-speech all day long and
wanted to see if having soft nature sounds in the background helped.

I didn't want to get distracted from what I'm working on by having to
select music that plays in the background  etc -- and I discovered this
package http://boodler.org -- that lets me play a variety of soft nature
sounds in the  background.

so i  wrote myself  module soundscape.el 
Code: github.io/tvraman/emacspeak (lisp/soundscape.el) -- docs are here:
http://tvraman.github.io/emacspeak/manual/soundscape.html

I divided the types of things I do  into categories:
(things I do == things I do in Emacs since I dont use anything else)

Communicate: mail, gnus, twitter, jabber  etc 
Program (prog-mode covers them all)
text-mode (write content)
special-mode: applications written in Emacs 
web: eww, w3

Then I created a mapping from modes to soundscapes (think mode -> mood) 
and finally, i  attached myself to select-mode-hook to switch the
soundscape that is playing. 

My first attempt at doing this failed badly -- I tried attaching myself
to buffer-list-update-hook -- it fails because that hook gets called way
too often.

I'm not wedded to the advice on select-window;
-- all  I want is to be able to attach my soundscape-update-hook to
the right point in Emacs so that when a buffer becomes current, the set
of playing SoundScapes automatically change (both killing off
soundscapes that are now irrelevant vs starting ones that are now
relevant per the context.

--Raman 
any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
> [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
> [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
>
>   > I specifically want to run a function when a function becomes current
>   > and interactable by the user -- agreed that I dont want to run code in
>   > the case of set-buffer. For now, an after advice on select-window does
>   > nicely -- a select-window-hook would obviate the need for that advice 
>
> That too will cause trouble for debugging.  I think it is better
> for interfaces to simply operate on whatever buffer you're typing at.
>
> What would you like to use select-window-hook to do?  Let's look for
> some way to achieve the ultimate goal.

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