dayoung@hplabsz.HPL.HP.COM (Doug A. Young) (01/27/89)
I have an application for which I need to be able to break a Gnu buffer into multple sections. Although the buffer should act like a normal buffer in most respects, I need to be able to do certain things on a sectional basis: Add a section, delete a section, set read-only mode on a section, go to a section, collapse or expand a section, and so on. A few operations that normally are associated with buffers also need to be moved to sections. For example, I need to keep a modified flag for each section, rather than the whole buffer. I'm told that some other emacses have this capability (zemacs ?) although I've never used one that does. So, my question: Before I embark on what may well be a major hack to Gnu emacs, has anyone done this already or tried to? Can anyone give me some info on emacs versions that support this capability that would help me keep from completely reinventing the wheel? Doug Young (dayoung@hplabs.hp.com) HP Labs
beede@pavo.SRC.Honeywell.COM (Michael Beede) (01/29/89)
It seems that the same effect (separating buffers into sections with per-section variables, it would be simpler to allow windows to exist without modelines. Then a stack of windows each showing a different buffer would represent the "sections" you need, and the contents could be collected correctly when the buffer was saved (or whenever you needed them). There may even be a way to specify a modelineless window, but I suspect it calls for modification of the display code. This might be simple and useful enough that it could make it into the GNU distribution, while I don't see section-local variables doing that (possibly I am too foolish to see their obvious appeal, though). --- Mike Beede -- Secure Computing Technology Center MN55-7282 Honeywell Systems & Research Center (612) 782-7147 2855 Anthony Lane South - Suite 130 Minneapolis MN beede@src.honeywell.com