Re: including emphasis characters as word characters?

[Eric Abrahamsen <eric@ericabrahamsen.net>]

Suvayu Ali <fatkasuvayu+linux@gmail.com> writes:

> On Wed, Nov 21, 2012 at 01:19:54PM +0800, Eric Abrahamsen wrote:
>> Would it make sense to add the markup characters (ie, the car of every
>> item in `org-emphasis-alist') to the list of word characters, so that as
>> we're moving/deleting/transposing by word in org, the markup characters
>> are included? I mean with a sentence like:
>> 
>> #+BEGIN_SRC org
>> I read a book called /Fortress Besieged/ and it was awful.
>> #+END_SRC
>> 
>> If point is at end of the sentence, I'd like to be able to hit "M-6 M-b"
>> and have point end up just before the first slash, then hit "M-2 M-d" and
>> kill both words plus second slash.
>> 
>> Would this be a bad idea for some reason?
>> 
>
> IMO unless it can be done conditionally, as in it is not part of a word
> when not used as markup, it will be very bad.  What about legitimate
> uses like:
>
>   I am feeling blue / green.
>
> or,
>
>   Addition is denoted by the + sign.

Interesting! In these cases, actually, I like having the slash and plus
be a one-character "word", I find editing the sentence much more
intuitive. But I did notice that now, `transpose-words' can produce some
ugly results. Before, with point between the two words:

/Fortress Beseiged/ -->  /Beseiged Fortress/

Now:

/Beseiged Fortress/ --> Fortress/ /Beseiged

Not so good. Perhaps what I actually want is to give these markup
characters "parenthesis"-type syntax. I'll give that a shot.

Editing preferences are subjective, but I'm also worried this will play
havoc with export/tables/table formulas/source blocks. I'll just run it
for a while and see what breaks.

Thanks for the input.

Eric


FYI, here's what I'm using, in a hook:

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
(defun my-emph-to-word ()
  (when (eq major-mode 'org-mode)
    (mapc (lambda (x)
	    (modify-syntax-entry (string-to-char (car x)) "w"))
	  org-emphasis-alist)))
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---