Re: emacs and beginning of lines

[Emanuel Berg]

Marcin Borkowski <mbork@wmi.amu.edu.pl> writes:

> BTW: back-to-indentation seems to be broken with
> visual-line-mode; it doesn't take into consideration,
> well, /visual/ lines. One might argue that it is a
> feature, but I think this is a bug: I guess that
> visual-line-mode is primarily useful for editing
> texts in natural languages

Yes, primarily that, like in plain text files. (Tho I
would recommend filling for that as well, as said.)

> (or markup languages, like LaTeX in my case)

Secondarily that, but for a .tex file you might as well
use auto-fill-mode as when you compile it (into a PDF)
that will be treated as unbroken lines.

I've found two minor complications. One is that, say
for this paragraph:

\def\realtimeenforcementsystem{Definition of
  {\bf real-time enforcement system}: The
  {\em real-time enforcement system}
  is the software that makes sure that the real-time
  tasks are executed in such a way that they are all

If you fill it, it may turn out like this:

\def\realtimeenforcementsystem{Definition of {\bf
  real-time enforcement system}: The {\em real-time
  enforcement system} is the software that makes sure
  that the real-time tasks are executed in such a way
  that they are all

As long as it doesn't break highlighting, it isn't that
much of an issue - still, I think the first version is
better.

If you make edits, then do M-q again, it may screw up
again and you have to fix it, again. There was a guy
who posted some sort of patch to this on
gnu.emacs.sources, but I don't remember how that worked
exactly. If he reads this, feel free to comment (of
course).

The second complication is that in the .pdf, it may
look like this "My friends told me" - say you want to
change that to "My associates" or whatever - and you
make a search for "My friends" - no hit! Because in the
source, it appears at the end of a line and there is a
"source line break" (but not PDF line break) right
after "My". A regexp search would do it, but it is
nothing I would like to do habitually and I wouldn't
intuitively think of that right away. Could be
automatized, perhaps...

Searching for stuff in LaTeX source can actually be
tedious for this reason, but on a larger scale as well,
because of the markup in general. But for words that
are bold, for example, you see they are bold instantly
(in the .pdf), but for line breaks it doesn't show that
way.

Is there a LaTeX submode for hiding markup or search
function to disregard it?

Those and other reasons is why I always stick to plain
text unless for really ambitious documents like thesis
and books/manuals that are intended for printing. It is
just so much more overhead than the simple and sweet
science of putting together plain text files and
messages. It is also more honest: if you are a moron,
it'll show. There is just no where to hide between
fancy markup.

-- 
underground experts united