[comp.emacs] Micro-emacs wish list

tmoody@sjuphil.uucp (T. Moody) (08/06/90)

I suppose you might think of this as an open letter to Daniel Lawrence. 
As an extremely satisfied user of Micro-emacs 3.10, I am interested in
learning what enhancements might be on the table for future versions. 
Two very useful items that I can think of are:

1.  A general undo command, for undoing the last edit, as opposed to the
last deletion.  I imagine that this is a difficult assignment.

2.  A mode for dealing with text without using carriage returns at the
end of on-screen lines.  XyWrite, for example, "wraps" text on-screen
without modifying the text file at all.  Many publishers prefer to
receive electronic manuscripts in this form.  The MS-DOS editor called
"VDE" is capable of this, but is in other respects somewhat deficient,
in my opinion.  I have no idea if this is a tall programming order,
since I am no programmer.

-- Todd

-- 
Todd Moody * sjuphil!tmoody@uunet.uu.net (Whatever that means)
            "The mind-forg'd manacles I hear."  -- William Blake

davidsen@sixhub.UUCP (Wm E. Davidsen Jr) (08/07/90)

In article <1990Aug6.151304.11745@sjuphil.uucp> tmoody@sjuphil.UUCP () writes:

| 2.  A mode for dealing with text without using carriage returns at the
| end of on-screen lines.  XyWrite, for example, "wraps" text on-screen
| without modifying the text file at all.  Many publishers prefer to
| receive electronic manuscripts in this form.  The MS-DOS editor called
| "VDE" is capable of this, but is in other respects somewhat deficient,
| in my opinion.  I have no idea if this is a tall programming order,
| since I am no programmer.

  Well, in 3.9 it's not problem, I assume it's still the smae. When you
are all done with your data entry, set the line length to 9999, place
your cursor on the line *before* the first paragraph, and start hitting
ESC-Q to reformat the paragraphs.

  Of course if you don't have tables or such you can repeat it rather
than typing the command repeatedly.

  I do this for submissions to several places.
-- 
bill davidsen - davidsen@sixhub.uucp (uunet!crdgw1!sixhub!davidsen)
    sysop *IX BBS and Public Access UNIX
    moderator of comp.binaries.ibm.pc and 80386 mailing list
"Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward" -me

dan@mdbs.uucp (Daniel Lawrence) (08/16/90)

In article <1990Aug6.151304.11745@sjuphil.uucp> tmoody@sjuphil.UUCP () writes:
>I suppose you might think of this as an open letter to Daniel Lawrence. 
>As an extremely satisfied user of Micro-emacs 3.10, I am interested in
>learning what enhancements might be on the table for future versions. 
>Two very useful items that I can think of are:

>1.  A general undo command, for undoing the last edit, as opposed to the
>last deletion.  I imagine that this is a difficult assignment.

	You are certainly not the first to ask for this.  I have come
up with several different designs for implimentation for this in the
last couple of years.  The most recent involves intercepting the text
changing commands (which are all in line.c) and keeping a dynamic
linked list of all text changes, with entries to delimit commands. 
Then we would need to add opposite functions to each function (I think
about 16 of them) and a mechinism to unplay the changes.  We then also
need to add a new package for memory allocation so we can reclaim the
memory from the change list when the editor gets near memory size. 
This would of course not work past saves to the disk.  I estimate the
overhead for this at about 25K of code, plus the size for the ever
expanding list of changes.

	This amount of code could change MicroEMACS into MacroEMACS.  If
there is anyone with a cleaner suggestion then this, please speak up.

>2.  A mode for dealing with text without using carriage returns at the
>end of on-screen lines.  XyWrite, for example, "wraps" text on-screen
>without modifying the text file at all.  Many publishers prefer to
>receive electronic manuscripts in this form.  The MS-DOS editor called
>"VDE" is capable of this, but is in other respects somewhat deficient,
>in my opinion.  I have no idea if this is a tall programming order,
>since I am no programmer.

	Could this not be handled by a filter program to change files
into and out of this unusual format?  This could be automatically
invoked from emacs when reading and saving.  Text handling in emacs has
its speed unfortunatly tied to the length of the line and a major change
in the data structures would be needed to handle this "returnless" text.

>-- Todd


>Todd Moody * sjuphil!tmoody@uunet.uu.net (Whatever that means)
>            "The mind-forg'd manacles I hear."  -- William Blake

			Daniel Lawrence  voice: (317) 742-5153
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