emacs-devel
[Top][All Lists]
Advanced

[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Re: man/kmacro.texi


From: Richard Stallman
Subject: Re: man/kmacro.texi
Date: Sat, 21 Aug 2004 17:46:21 -0400

    What is a complete line?  I would say, a line terminated by a newline
    _or_ the end of the buffer.  For `apply-macro-to-region-lines' it
    means "terminated by a newline" with no "or".  This is ambiguous and
    should be mentioned _if_ this is intended.  But _is_ it intentional?

It must be intentional, but whether the person realized it was
different from the usual Emacs behavior is a separate question.
In any case, it seems to me that being compatible with the usual
Emacs handling of repeating for each line would be an improvement.
Would you like to change the code, and remove the word "complete"
in the manual here?

    The entire section `(emacs)Keyboard Macro Counter' is difficult to
    read.

Would you like to try to rewrite it?

    The entire section `(emacs)Keyboard Macro Counter' is difficult to
    read.  I am pretty sure that it must be very useful for _something_,
    but it is not obvious what that is.

The purpose is for numbering items in a table.
For instance, you could write a macro to turn

* Hello
* Thank you
* You're welcome
* Goodbye

into 

1. Hello
2. Thank you
3. You're welcome
4. Goodbye

    I would _guess_ that `kmacro-insert-counter' and `kmacro-add-counter'
    only make sense during execution of a macro...

Yes, of course.

    As a last remark, this chapter seems to come rather early in the Emacs
    manual.  Section `(emacs)Save Keyboard Macro' seems to assume a
    non-trivial level of knowledge about key bindings, like the difference
    between local and global bindings, whereas the reader may not have any
    knowledge at all about binding keys at that stage.

Keyboard macros used to be documented inside Customization.
I think this chapter should be moved back there.
Also, moving some parts of it to emacs-xtra is a good idea.




reply via email to

[Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread]