Re: change in fill-paragraph

[ken]

On 04/20/2008 01:32 PM B. T. Raven wrote:
> ken wrote:
> > On 04/19/2008 09:24 PM B. T. Raven wrote:
> > > ken wrote:
> > > > With the versions of emacs I've been using for years, fill-paragraph 
> > > > won't fill/reformat include in its definition of a paragraph any 
> > > > line which begins with a space.  However, the newer emacs version I 
> > > > use at work will.  That is,
> > > >
> > > > (1) In the older versions, this will be
> > > > one paragraph.  M-q will reformat it
> > > > fine.  I like it this way.
> > > >  (2) In the older versions, having just a
> > > > single space at the beginning
> > > > of a line tells paragraph-fill that this is
> > > > a separate paragraph.  So this would be a
> > > > separate paragraph.
> > > >  (3) In the new emacs version, all of these
> > > > would constitute one paragraph and so be
> > > > filled together.  I would much prefer the older way
> > > > fill-paragraph works... so that (1), (2), and (3)
> > > > stay where they are.
> > > >
> > > > How would I restore the old behavior to the new version of emacs?
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > Thanks much.
> > >
> > > You can get this with
> > >
> > > "(paragraph-indent-text-mode)
> > >
> > > Major mode for editing text, with leading spaces starting a paragraph.
> > > In this mode, you do not need blank lines between paragraphs
> > > when the first line of the following paragraph starts with whitespace.
> > > `paragraph-indent-minor-mode' provides a similar facility ..."
> >
> > Thanks for this, but I didn't want to change the entire mode, as the 
> > behavior above by fill-paragraph happens also when I'm using 
> > html-helper-mode, what I use for editing/creating html.  It may well 
> > happen in other modes also, e.g., perl-mode, c-mode... not sure, 
> > because I haven't tried a lot of other modes at work yet.
> >
> > In brief, I just want to change the behavior of fill-paragraph back to 
> > what it was previously for all modes.  If paragraph-indent-minor-mode 
> > will do this, what would I need to put in ~/.emacs to invoke it for 
> > any file I might open and not have "paragraph-indent-minor-mode" show 
> > up in the mode line?  (My mode line already is already occupied with 
> > all it can accomodate.)
>
> I just typed M-x paragraph-indent-minor-mode in a text-mode buffer and 
> it didn't change anything on the mode line. Then I did unfill paragraph 
> on some indented and unindented random strings with no blank lines and 
> they were treated as indented paragraphs. Then M-x text-mode turns off 
> this minor mode.
>
> > Again, thanks for your help.
>
> I don't have any experience with these modes; they are new to me too and 
> I just looked them up in the docs. I am happy with a blank line as 
> paragraph separator and I don't see any need for the old conventions for 
> paragraph-start and paragraph-separate. Maybe tweaking these two 
> variables would give you what you want. Why do you want it anyway, may I 
> ask? If it's for publication, you would want to run the file through a 
> page layout program (TeX, Auctex) which will lose the blank lines, 
> indent new paragraphs, and a whole lot more.

Thanks.  Those two variables may provide the answer.  I checked the 
values in the older version and they are different.  Perhaps just 
copying those into the new version will fix things.  Hopefully I won't 
have to play too much with the regexps.  There isn't a lot of time for 
that on the job.

Having all text filled into blocklike paragraphs might be okay in some 
situations, but when editing or writing something in html or C or perl 
etc., it's nice to preserve the structure indicated by indentations and 
nested indentations.  I really don't understand why the author of the 
latest emacs would want to dispense with that.

--
The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the
same level of thinking we were at when we created them.
        -- Albert Einstein