Hi, Emacs!
On Fri, 2 Sep 2005, Richard M. Stallman wrote:
For example, I was tearing my hair out in frustration a couple of years
back, trying to get the sentence/paragraph movement and filling stuff to
work properly in CC Mode.
If the documentation of paragraph-start and paragraph-separate is not
clear enough, we can clarify it. I doubt that this would take the form
of a definition of paragraphs, though. The reason is that there is no
simple definition of paragraphs at the base of the current code or
these two variables.
Read my patch and reconsider!
The concepts that the design is based on are the concepts that you see
in the manual.
I've worked out just what's been bugging me, and that's the definition of
`paragraph-start': It suggests (though it doesn't quite explicitly say)
that paragraph-start matches the start of _every_ paragraph. This isn't
true - any line following a separator line is the start of a paragraph.
The four regexps documented on this page all define chunks of
natural-language text: paragraphs, pages and sentences. So how
about renaming this @section something like Sentences, Paragraphs
and Pages, and making the focus of the @node the definition of
these things in terms of the regexps, rather than the regexps
themselves?
I would be glad to consider a change of this sort.
OK, here's my first shot at a patch: As a matter of interest, what's
this node doing in Searching and Matching? Would it not be more at
home under Text?
2005-09-03 Alan Mackenzie [EMAIL PROTECTED]
* searching.texi (Standard Regexps): Rename the @section Regular
Expressions for Pages, Paragraphs, and Sentences. Insert a full
description of paragraphs.
*** searching.texi Tue Aug 30 09:15:42 2005
--- searching-1.67.acm.texi Sat Sep 3 12:01:10 2005
***
*** 1643,1686
@end table
@node Standard Regexps
! @section Standard Regular Expressions Used in Editing
@cindex regexps used standardly in editing
@cindex standard regexps used in editing
! This section describes some variables that hold regular expressions
! used for certain purposes in editing:
!
@defvar page-delimiter
! This is the regular expression describing line-beginnings that separate
! pages. The default value is @code{^\014} (i.e., @code{^^L} or
! @code{^\C-l}); this matches a line that starts with a formfeed
! character.
@end defvar
! The following two regular expressions should @emph{not} assume the
! match always starts at the beginning of a line; they should not use
! @samp{^} to anchor the match. Most often, the paragraph commands do
! check for a match only at the beginning of a line, which means that
! @samp{^} would be superfluous. When there is a nonzero left margin,
! they accept matches that start after the left margin. In that case, a
! @samp{^} would be incorrect. However, a @samp{^} is harmless in modes
! where a left margin is never used.
@defvar paragraph-separate
! This is the regular expression for recognizing the beginning of a line
! that separates paragraphs. (If you change this, you may have to
! change @code{paragraph-start} also.) The default value is
! @[EMAIL PROTECTED][@ \t\f]*$}}, which matches a line that consists entirely
of
! spaces, tabs, and form feeds (after its left margin).
@end defvar
@defvar paragraph-start
! This is the regular expression for recognizing the beginning of a line
! that starts @emph{or} separates paragraphs. The default value is
! @[EMAIL PROTECTED]\f\\|[ \t]*$}}, which matches a line containing only
! whitespace or starting with a form feed (after its left margin).
@end defvar
@defvar sentence-end
If [EMAIL PROTECTED], the value should be a regular expression describing
the end of a sentence, including the whitespace following the
--- 1643,1729
@end table
@node Standard Regexps
! @section Regular Expressions for Pages, Paragraphs, and Sentences
@cindex regexps used standardly in editing
@cindex standard regexps used in editing
! This section describes the regular expressions Emacs uses to
! recognize pages, paragraphs, and sentences. By setting these
! variables appropriately, the Elisp programmer can control the precise
! effect of the standard commands that move over, kill, fill, mark,
! narrow to, and otherwise operate on these pieces of text. Note that
! these variables are @emph{not} buffer local by default.
!
! @table @asis
! @cindex page
! @item Pages
@defvar page-delimiter
! This is the regular expression describing line-beginnings that
! separate pages. The default value is @code{^\014} (i.e.,
! @code{^^L} or @code{^\C-l}); this matches a line that starts with
! a formfeed character.
@end defvar
! @cindex paragraph
! @item Paragraphs
! Buffers divide into @dfn{paragraphs}, sequences of whole lines which
! normally don't [EMAIL PROTECTED] is possible for a blank line to be
! both the last line of one
