Re: [PATCH] Allow more control over inserted whitespace in capture templates

[Toby Cubitt <tsc25@cantab.net>]

Was there any feedback on this patch, or did it get lost in the noise?

At least for me, org-capture breaks the document heading layout by
inserting incorrect amounts of whitespace. And there's no way to
configure capture templates to make it work correctly.

The patch I posted fixes this behaviour.

(Or am I missing some already-existing way of doing this? See below for a
detailed description of the problem.)

Toby




On Mon, Feb 13, 2012 at 01:26:09PM +0100, Toby Cubitt wrote:
> When capturing an item as a subheading, the capture template :empty-lines
> property is not sufficient to ensure the correct document layout is
> maintained after capturing.
> 
> This patch fixes the capture behaviour to insert new subheadings
> immediately after the previous heading (rather than immediately before
> the next one). And it adds new :empty-lines-before and :empty-lines-after
> capture template properties. (I can split these two changes into
> separated patches, if desired.)
> 
> When set, the new :empty-lines-before and :empty-lines-after properties
> take precedence over :empty-lines in determining the amount of whitespace
> to add before or after the captured item, respectively. Together, these
> changes allow the correct document layout to be achieved after capturing,
> without any manual editing.
> 
> (Since the whole idea of org-capture is to rapidly capture new ideas or
> todos, having to manually edit whitespace after capturing to fix the
> document layout is far from ideal.)
> 
> 
> To give a more detailed example of why I think these changes are needed,
> consider for example an org-mode document in which headings are separated
> by two empty lines, and subheadings are separated by a single empty
> line. (This is a natural layout if one wants headings to be separated by
> whitespace when folded, but subheadings not to be separated when folded):
> 
> ------------------------
> * heading 1
> ** subheading 1.1
> 
> ** subheading 1.2
> 
> 
> * heading 2
> ** subheading 2.1
> ------------------------
> 
> Let's say I want add a captured item as a new "subheading 1.3" under
> "heading 1", preserving this layout structure. Then we need to add the
> new item immediately after "subheading 1.2", inserting one empty line
> before and two empty lines after. There appears to be no way to do this
> using :empty-lines.
> 
> In fact, the existing implementation adds the new capture item
> immediately *before* the *following* heading ("heading 2" in this case),
> which seems to be altogether wrong, as it effectively forces two empty
> lines before the new item, regardless of the :empty-lines setting.
> 
> Currently, setting :empty-lines to 0 leaves the document looking like
> this:
> 
> ------------------------
> * heading 1
> ** subheading 1.1
> 
> ** subheading 1.2
> 
> 
> ** subheading 1.3
> * heading 2
> ** subheading 2.1
> ------------------------
> 
> whilst setting :empty-lines to 1 leaves the document looking like this:
> 
> ------------------------
> * heading 1
> ** subheading 1.1
> 
> ** subheading 1.2
> 
> 
> 
> ** subheading 1.3
> 
> * heading 2
> ** subheading 2.1
> ------------------------
> 
> neither of which are likely to ever be what we want.
> 
> With this patch, setting the new :empty-lines-before to 1 and
> :empty-lines-after to 2 results in the correct structure after capturing:
> 
> ------------------------
> * heading 1
> ** subheading 1.1
> 
> ** subheading 1.2
> 
> ** subheading 1.3
> 
> 
> * heading 2
> ** subheading 2.1
> ------------------------
> 
> 
> I think this patch is largely orthogonal to the recent "removing
> whitespace from new captures" patch (currently in patchwork). That patch
> causes `whitespace-cleanup' to be called in the CAPTURE buffer before
> finalizing, which doesn't affect the additional whitespace inserted later
> on by the :empty-lines property. This patch allows more control over the
> latter, by providing a fairly simple extension of the existing
> :empty-lines property.
> 
> Toby


-- 
Dr T. S. Cubitt
Mathematics and Quantum Information group
Department of Mathematics
Complutense University
Madrid, Spain

email: tsc25@cantab.net
web:   www.dr-qubit.org