Re: M-x man could better guess neighboring word

[martin rudalics]

> Principles: always offer at least two default choices, one
> forwards/beneath, one backwards/beneath the cursor. The topmost of
> which should be the closest to the cursor. Skip past punctuation at
> the ends of sentences too...

Does the attached patch obey these principles?  I'm not quite sure
which characters shall consitute punctuation.

*** man.el.~1.175.~     Sat Dec  8 10:07:02 2007
--- man.el      Sun Dec 16 11:06:08 2007
***************
*** 647,672 ****
  (defsubst Man-default-man-entry (&optional pos)
    "Make a guess at a default manual entry based on the text at POS.
  If POS is nil, the current point is used."
!   (let (word)
      (save-excursion
        (if pos (goto-char pos))
        ;; Default man entry title is any word the cursor is on, or if
!       ;; cursor not on a word, then nearest preceding word.
!       (skip-chars-backward "-a-zA-Z0-9._+:")
!       (let ((start (point)))
!       (skip-chars-forward "-a-zA-Z0-9._+:")
!       ;; If there is a continuation at the end of line, check the
!       ;; following line too, eg:
!       ;;     see this-
!       ;;     command-here(1)
!       (setq word (buffer-substring-no-properties start (point)))
!       (if (looking-at "[ \t\r\n]+\\([-a-zA-Z0-9._+:]+\\)([0-9])")
!           (setq word (concat word (match-string 1)))))
!       (if (string-match "[._]+$" word)
!         (setq word (substring word 0 (match-beginning 0))))
        ;; If looking at something like *strcat(... , remove the '*'
!       (if (string-match "^*" word)
!         (setq word (substring word 1)))
        ;; If looking at something like ioctl(2) or brc(1M), include the
        ;; section number in the returned value.  Remove text properties.
        (concat word
--- 647,685 ----
  (defsubst Man-default-man-entry (&optional pos)
    "Make a guess at a default manual entry based on the text at POS.
  If POS is nil, the current point is used."
!   (let (word start original-pos distance)
      (save-excursion
        (if pos (goto-char pos))
        ;; Default man entry title is any word the cursor is on, or if
!       ;; cursor not on a word, nearest preceding or next word on this
!       ;; line.
!       (if (not (zerop (skip-chars-backward "-a-zA-Z0-9._+:")))
!         (setq start (point))
!       (setq original-pos (point))
!       (setq distance (abs (skip-chars-backward " \t")))
!       (if (not (zerop (skip-chars-backward "-a-zA-Z0-9._+:")))
!           (progn
!             (setq start (point))
!             (goto-char original-pos)
!             (if (and (< (skip-chars-forward " \t") distance)
!                      (looking-at "[-a-zA-Z0-9._+:]"))
!                 (setq start (point))
!               (goto-char start)))
!         (skip-chars-forward " \t")
!         (setq start (point))))
!       (skip-chars-forward "-a-zA-Z0-9._+:")
!       (setq word (buffer-substring-no-properties start (point)))
!       ;; If there is a continuation at the end of line, check the
!       ;; following line too, eg:
!       ;;     see this-
!       ;;     command-here(1)
!       (when (looking-at "[ \t\r\n]+\\([-a-zA-Z0-9._+:]+\\)([0-9])")
!       (setq word (concat word (match-string-no-properties 1))))
!       (when (string-match "[._]+$" word)
!       (setq word (substring word 0 (match-beginning 0))))
        ;; If looking at something like *strcat(... , remove the '*'
!       (when (string-match "^*" word)
!       (setq word (substring word 1)))
        ;; If looking at something like ioctl(2) or brc(1M), include the
        ;; section number in the returned value.  Remove text properties.
        (concat word