Re: [O] [RFC] Change visibility for bracket links

[Joost Kremers]

On Mon, Oct 10 2016, Clément Pit--Claudel wrote:
> Agreed.  I'd be curious to get feedback from users of 
> prettify-symbols-mode, too.  And to know whether your objections 
> apply as strongly to just revealing the brackets when the point 
> is on them (not when they are being moused over) 

I don't use prettify-symbols-mode, but I am a fairly heavy user of 
AUCTeX's TeX-fold-mode, which hides all sorts of LaTeX code (and 
can be customised to hide even more in quite sophisticated ways). 
For example, it shows

   This is some \textit{emphasised} text.

as 

   This is some emphasised text.

with the word "emphasised" in a different colour (to indicate that 
it's been folded) and with whatever fontification the argument of 
the \textit macro gets (italicised by default). 

Now, TeX-fold-mode has the behaviour you mention: as soon as you 
move point (not the mouse cursor) "into" some folded text, it gets 
unfolded (with | indicating point):

   This is some |\textit{emphasised} text.

with the part "\textit{emphasised}" highlighted to indicate that 
it's actuall folded.

Personally, I'm a *big* fan of this behaviour, even though I use 
visual-line-mode in my LaTeX buffers, which means that when text 
is temporarily unfolded, the paragraph may rewrap (and wrap back 
when point leaves the unfolded text causing it to be folded 
again). Since there is visual feedback (from the font colour) that 
some word or stretch of text is folded, I know that the text will 
unfold when I move point into it, so I don't find it distracting. 
The fact that the rest of the paragraph may rewrap is also not an 
issue for me, because I'm not actually focussing on that part of 
the text.

Personally, I've also always found it annoying in Org that editing 
around links (or emphasis etc. with `org-hide-emphasis-markers' 
set to t) is unpredictable and I never really understood why 
functionality similar to TeX-fold-mode hadn't been implemented. I 
thinks it's a very straightforward and easy to understand method 
for indicating which character point is actually on, making 
editing much more comfortable.

Just my €0.02, of course.


--
Joost Kremers
Life has its moments