Re: FFAP

[Stefan Monnier]

> I had an idea for a long time how to do such an integration, but
> not implemented it yet because I currently don't see how to do this
> without loading the whole ffap.el by default.  Perhaps we should
> rewrite most of the ffap functionality and simplify it.

By "integration" I mostly mean the functionality, not necessarily
the code.  But if it means preloading ffap.el, that's not necessarily
a bad thing, although I think that by integrating it, we can make it
a lot simpler, so I expect that a complete rewrite will be preferable
(especially since we probably wouldn't provide every single last detail
of ffap's functionality).

> The idea is to put a file/URL from the text around the point into
> the minibuffer's default values list.  So typing `C-x C-f M-n'
> on a file name will bring in it from the current buffer into the
> minibuffer.

I thought about it but M-n is already used in some file prompts for
other purposes, so the user would then have to hit M-n more than once to
get the file-at-point, which makes it cumbersome.  I think a dedicated
keybinding would be better.

BTW, another possibility is to do what complete.el does: use a special
file name (complete.el uses "<>" but we could choose something else,
like " ") to mean file-at-point.  I think it's a worse solution (both
because it may collide with a real file name, and more importantly
because it makes it impossible/difficult to edit the file-at-point), but
I throw it out, for completeness's sake.


        Stefan