Re: Preserving sanity in Emacs [Re: rampant region highlighting]

[Alan Mackenzie]

Morning, Lennart!

On Mon, Apr 07, 2008 at 11:37:09PM +0200, Lennart Borgman (gmail) wrote:
> Alan Mackenzie wrote:
> >>I acknowledge that having the point always on-screen has benefits too
> >>(though e.g. a fringe indicator could "point towards the offscreen
> >>point" to address some concerns there...), but what if I'm just
> >>scrolling up to look at something?  Martin's hack ensured that I can
> >>scroll away to have a look, and the point will reliably be where I left
> >>it when I scrolled back.

> >The functions you're talking about are fulfilled in Emacs by the mark,
> >not the point.  I frequently scoll a bit to look at things.  Then I
> >scroll back to get where I was, unless I want to stay where I've got to.

> >The point is, by your mechanism, having scrolled away from point (leaving
> >point off the screen), how do you then indicate where on the screen you
> >want point to be set to, and how do you set point there?  The general
> >Emacs answer is that you indicate a position by setting point.  Hmm.
> >We're going round in circles.  (You're presumably going to say "you click
> >the mouse to set point."  This violates the Emacs principle that
> >everything must be doable without a mouse.)

> Another way to look at this would perhaps be to:

> - Regard the buffer in a kind of read-only state when the window-point 
> is outside the window ;-)

Hmm.

> - If a command concerns the current buffer and it is not a scroll 
> command then just bring back window-point to where it was inside the 
> window before scrolling.

Sorry, I can't parse that.  What is "window-point"?  Does "where it was"
refer to the buffer position, or the position on the screen relative to
the top of the window?

> Don't do more (ie do not execute the command), just tell that point was
> outside of the window therefore have been brought back.

Don't execute the command?  Yikes!!  Yet one more frivolous item of state
to clog up one's brain.  And a few million "..., except when ...."s to
clog up commands' doc strings.

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).