Re: mc Digest, Vol 102, Issue 3

2012-10-15 Thread Martin Mísař
I do all my coding in mcedit, I usually have about 8 windows with mc 
opened and copying between them is important to me. I usually use 
shift-mouse method.


When there was first release of MC where invisible characters (Visible 
trailing spaces and Visible tabs) was present I turned them off due 
this mouse copy(-paste) problem.


Is it possible to detect shift-mousepress and switch them off 
automatically and after copying switch them on again? Or do it in the 
copy buffer to avoid redrawing of the screen on slow terminals?


I also turned off Return does autoindent also due (copy-)paste 
problem. Maybe it also could be detected that paste was done 
(shift-middlepress) and swith autoindent off for that moment...


Both these functions helps and I would use them, but if they breaks 
mouse copy-paste which is important to me, I have switched them off. I 
use mouse copy-paste about twice/hour, sometimes more.


Thanks
Martin
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Re: mc Digest, Vol 102, Issue 3

2012-10-15 Thread Holger Herrlich

To copy text from one mcedit instance to another, mark the text via
[F3], copy it to a file (dflt: .mc/cedit/cooledit.clip) via [ctl]+[f],
switch to the other mcedit and load the text via [F15] (maybe
[shift]+[F3]). This will work for all instances of mcedit if run by the
same user.

hth Holger


On 10/15/2012 08:54 AM, Martin Mísař wrote:
 I do all my coding in mcedit, I usually have about 8 windows with mc
 opened and copying between them is important to me. I usually use
 shift-mouse method.
 
 When there was first release of MC where invisible characters (Visible
 trailing spaces and Visible tabs) was present I turned them off due
 this mouse copy(-paste) problem.
 
 Is it possible to detect shift-mousepress and switch them off
 automatically and after copying switch them on again? Or do it in the
 copy buffer to avoid redrawing of the screen on slow terminals?
 
 I also turned off Return does autoindent also due (copy-)paste
 problem. Maybe it also could be detected that paste was done
 (shift-middlepress) and swith autoindent off for that moment...
 
 Both these functions helps and I would use them, but if they breaks
 mouse copy-paste which is important to me, I have switched them off. I
 use mouse copy-paste about twice/hour, sometimes more.
 
 Thanks
 Martin
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Re: mc Digest, Vol 102, Issue 3

2012-10-15 Thread Theodore Kilgore


On Mon, 15 Oct 2012, Holger Herrlich wrote:

 
 To copy text from one mcedit instance to another, mark the text via
 [F3], copy it to a file (dflt: .mc/cedit/cooledit.clip) via [ctl]+[f],
 switch to the other mcedit and load the text via [F15] (maybe
 [shift]+[F3]). This will work for all instances of mcedit if run by the
 same user.
 
 hth Holger

Ah, but suppose that one wants to copy out from something being edited 
with mcedit into some other place? For example, you are writing code and 
you would like to discuss some code snippet with a colleague. So you open 
pine and start an e-mail and want to copy into the e-mail. What then?

The point is, mcedit needs to be not just friendly to itself but also to 
other applications.

Theodore Kilgore

 
 
 On 10/15/2012 08:54 AM, Martin Mísa? wrote:
  I do all my coding in mcedit, I usually have about 8 windows with mc
  opened and copying between them is important to me. I usually use
  shift-mouse method.
  
  When there was first release of MC where invisible characters (Visible
  trailing spaces and Visible tabs) was present I turned them off due
  this mouse copy(-paste) problem.
  
  Is it possible to detect shift-mousepress and switch them off
  automatically and after copying switch them on again? Or do it in the
  copy buffer to avoid redrawing of the screen on slow terminals?
  
  I also turned off Return does autoindent also due (copy-)paste
  problem. Maybe it also could be detected that paste was done
  (shift-middlepress) and swith autoindent off for that moment...
  
  Both these functions helps and I would use them, but if they breaks
  mouse copy-paste which is important to me, I have switched them off. I
  use mouse copy-paste about twice/hour, sometimes more.
  
  Thanks
  Martin
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Re: mc Digest, Vol 102, Issue 3

2012-10-15 Thread Helmut Hullen
Hallo, Holger,

Du meintest am 15.10.12 zum Thema Re: mc Digest, Vol 102, Issue 3:

 I do all my coding in mcedit, I usually have about 8 windows with mc
 opened and copying between them is important to me. I usually use
 shift-mouse method.

[top post and full quote reordered]

 To copy text from one mcedit instance to another, mark the text via
 [F3], copy it to a file (dflt: .mc/cedit/cooledit.clip) via
 [ctl]+[f], switch to the other mcedit and load the text via [F15]
 (maybe [shift]+[F3]). This will work for all instances of mcedit if
 run by the same user.

In newer versions of mc ctrl f writes per default into

~/.local/share/mc/mcedit/mcedit.clip

Viele Gruesse!
Helmut
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Re: mc Digest, Vol 102, Issue 3

2012-10-15 Thread Helmut Hullen
Hallo, Theodore,

Du meintest am 15.10.12 zum Thema Re: mc Digest, Vol 102, Issue 3:


 To copy text from one mcedit instance to another, mark the text via
 [F3], copy it to a file (dflt: .mc/cedit/cooledit.clip) via
 [ctl]+[f], switch to the other mcedit and load the text via [F15]
 (maybe [shift]+[F3]). This will work for all instances of mcedit if
 run by the same user.

 Ah, but suppose that one wants to copy out from something being
 edited with mcedit into some other place? For example, you are
 writing code and you would like to discuss some code snippet with a
 colleague. So you open pine and start an e-mail and want to copy into
 the e-mail. What then?

Then I copy the marked text with ctrl f to (p.e.) /tmp/my.txt and  
send this file as an e-mail attachment. That's a simple way.

Viele Gruesse!
Helmut
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Re: mc Digest, Vol 102, Issue 3

2012-10-13 Thread chris glur
--
 2. The ghost tabs and ghost single space characters are not 
 transferred
anywhere else when mouse-paste is done

You mean an exta comminication between the mouse-paster and the editor?
Such complications are to be avoided.

  I understand that there is an option to turn these ghost characters on,
 or to turn them off.
GOOD! Show me how ?

 As to your statement But paste-ability must take precedence over your
special example, because it's a more basic operation. I am in fact not
Editing files, or copying pieces of what you are editing to some other
place? Me, I spend more time with editing the files. And if what I am
editing is code, which is often the case, then I really do not want the
hidden characters to be turned off and no way to turn them on. That would
render relatively useless an editor which I have come to rely on for much
of that work, which would make me unhappy..

No. My requiremet trumps yours.
The most primitive requirement is UNIQUE.
All further fancy-facilities are merely ONE of an infinite fad posibility.
In law and common sense, drinking water may be a human-right; tea,
coke...whisky is not.

PS. I've hit another arty-crapness, similar to the use of *.pdf, where plain
text is adequate and thus better: `links` fills in the line-len with spaces!?

Shoot all the grafiti-vandals!!
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Re: mc Digest, Vol 102, Issue 3

2012-10-13 Thread Mueen Nawaz
chris glur crg...@gmail.com writes:

 --
 2. The ghost tabs and ghost single space characters are not 
 transferred
anywhere else when mouse-paste is done

 You mean an exta comminication between the mouse-paster and the editor?
 Such complications are to be avoided.

We already have them. You have to shift click to copy and paste with the
mouse. Should we get rid of that as well? I have a good old friend who
detests syntax highlighting - he did most of his programming before they
became popular. Many people consider a spell checker bloat. 

You have to realize that you're arbitrarily drawing a line as to what's
acceptable and what's artsy. Anything beyond Edlin's capabilities is
artsy to some. 

  I understand that there is an option to turn these ghost characters on,
 or to turn them off.
 GOOD! Show me how ?

In the editor, press F9, go to Options and then General. Then outside of
the editor go to Options and Save Setup - this will ensure the
behavior is saved for future Midnight Commander sessions. 

Given that it can be turned off, is there still a problem here? I can
understand it would be a serious usability issue if one can't and your
grievances would have a lot more weight, but I think it's fine as it is
as long as the user can choose it. I suppose one could argue which
should be the default mode.

 No. My requiremet trumps yours.
 The most primitive requirement is UNIQUE.
 All further fancy-facilities are merely ONE of an infinite fad posibility.

And some of those fancy-facilities is why people use Midnight
Commander. 

Also, I'll add that Midnight Commander lets you use a different editor
if mcedit doesn't suit your needs, which makes things much more flexible
for the user. 

-- 
In an Astronomy class (toward an Astronomy major, not that gen-ed
rubbish) the professor did not tell us we would have to remember
constants, and he asked them as questions. They were short questions,
and weren't worth a lot.

One of them was: What is the orbital period of Saturn? (2 pts/100)

I started thinking about Bode's law and the posibility I could calculate
it from an approximate radius I would get from that law... if I could
remember it. But when you expect a 72% to be an A on a test, you have
bigger fish to fry.

Then I got it. It was right, it should work, and no one would have to be
nailed to anything.

I wrote: One Saturn-Year

I didn't get credit for it. A couple years later a sophomore was telling
me about this funny question he had in the same class. He showed it to
me. It read:

What is the orbital period of Saturn? (Do not put one Saturn-Year)

I was so right that it had to be guarded against. Yet those were 2
points I would never have.

(as told by SetupWeasel on Slashdot)


/\  /\   /\  /
   /  \/  \ u e e n /  \/  a w a z
   mu...@nawaz.org
   anl

 
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Re: mc Digest, Vol 102, Issue 3

2012-10-13 Thread Theodore Kilgore


On Sat, 13 Oct 2012, chris glur wrote:

 --
  2. The ghost tabs and ghost single space characters are not 
  transferred
 anywhere else when mouse-paste is done
 
 You mean an exta comminication between the mouse-paster and the editor?
 Such complications are to be avoided.
 
   I understand that there is an option to turn these ghost characters on,
  or to turn them off.
 GOOD! Show me how ?

Well, I had to go and check on this because I find it rather too 
inconvenient to turn this stuff off and on all the time. But the following 
does work:

1. You are editing a file where you see the objectionable --
things which indicate tabs, and you want them to go away. So ...

2. Hit F9, Open the Options tab on the upper bar.

3. Go down to General and open it. You will see a table called Editor 
Options.

4. Among the editor options you will see [ ] Visible tabs and another 
one which is [ ] Visible trailing spaces among others. These are of 
course on if you see an x inside the brackets, like this [x] and they
are off if there is only [ ] so you switch these either on or off 
according to taste and then exit with save by hitting the OK option.

Thus, it would seem to me that this gives you what you need. Apparently 
you do not want to have these invisible characters under any circumstances 
so just turn them off. 

Unfortunately, it does not solve *my* problem which is that it is so 
difficult to turn them on or off that it is disruptive. Thus, I continue 
to wish for an option to turn on and off, which would let the human 
editing the file to see the invisible characters but cause them to be 
invisible to the mouse.


 
  As to your statement But paste-ability must take precedence over your
 special example, because it's a more basic operation. I am in fact not
 Editing files, or copying pieces of what you are editing to some other
 place? Me, I spend more time with editing the files. And if what I am
 editing is code, which is often the case, then I really do not want the
 hidden characters to be turned off and no way to turn them on. That would
 render relatively useless an editor which I have come to rely on for much
 of that work, which would make me unhappy..
 
 No. My requiremet trumps yours.
 The most primitive requirement is UNIQUE.
 All further fancy-facilities are merely ONE of an infinite fad posibility.
 In law and common sense, drinking water may be a human-right; tea,
 coke...whisky is not.

True enough. But I bet that I am not alone in saying that the editor is in 
your sense more primitive than the mouse. Look at history. Which came 
first? The editor? Or the mouse? Which was a more basic need for the 
development of the modern computer? The editor? Or the mouse? Some, I 
believe, would think that your statement about further fancy-facilities 
applies more appropriately to the mouse, not to the editor. I have known a 
lot of people who thought that, and some of them have hardly been geeks at 
all, just ordinary users who wanted to get work done. It is good to keep 
that in perspective and not to get too dogmatic about whether modern 
feature X of a computer is more essential than modern feature Y. Sometimes 
_both_ X and Y have their appropriate uses and the best approach of all is 
to make sure that X and Y do not clash and interfere with each other 
and/or cripple some really nice and useful feature of the other. 

But all of that is by the way. In the present circumstances what I 
understand is that you want tabs and spaces to be invisible at all times 
because they get in the way of mouse-copy or mouse-paste. In the mcedit 
config options, there is indeed a way to turn them off, which would seem 
to solve that problem for you.

Cheers,

Theodore Kilgore
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Re: mc Digest, Vol 102, Issue 3

2012-10-13 Thread Theodore Kilgore


On Sat, 13 Oct 2012, Mueen Nawaz wrote:

 chris glur crg...@gmail.com writes:
 
  --
  2. The ghost tabs and ghost single space characters are not 
  transferred
 anywhere else when mouse-paste is done
 
  You mean an exta comminication between the mouse-paster and the editor?
  Such complications are to be avoided.
 
 We already have them. You have to shift click to copy and paste with the
 mouse. Should we get rid of that as well? 

Actually, it seems to me that is a good question. There may be a good 
reason for needing to use the shift button, but what is the reason, 
exactly? Just curious. But perhaps someone knows. 

OTOH, to hold down the shift key is rather easy. The question of 
switching invisible characters on or off is not a mere holding of the 
shift key. The procedure for such switching is sufficiently long and 
involved that it would be really inconvenient to use it more than once a 
day. (Thinking out loud: Hmmm. Possibly a script to do this could be 
mapped to some weird key combination, maybe Cntrl-Alt-shift or something 
else that's weird)

I have a good old friend who
 detests syntax highlighting - he did most of his programming before they
 became popular. Many people consider a spell checker bloat. 

Good examples. I do regard spell checkers as bloat. None of them can 
actually be trusted. For example, some spell checkers probably do not know 
that both calendar and calender are words, while some other better 
spell checkers might have been taught that both of them _are_ words. But 
to have one of the better spell checkers which knows that both of 
these are correct spellings is in itself no help at all. A calendar is 
hung on the wall. A calender is used while manufacturing paper. There is 
no context in which both spellings are correct. Oops. How many other 
examples of this problem are there? Many. One might start with its and 
it's. Again, in any given context at most one of the two can be correct. 

 
 You have to realize that you're arbitrarily drawing a line as to what's
 acceptable and what's artsy. Anything beyond Edlin's capabilities is
 artsy to some. 

Indeed. That was part of my point. Another part would be that some people 
might consider even the presence of a mouse to be artsy. One does have 
to be careful about such matters. Especially, leaders of big projects need 
to be more careful. 

For example, not all design decisions taken from on high both in KDE and 
in Gnome about how a desktop environment is supposed to work have been 
universally popular. Some of those decisions have not always meshed 
well with the work flow and work habits and expectations of too many of 
their users. Sometimes, the response has been that the problem lies with 
those users who just can not understand what is good for them. Such an 
attitude seems to have worked well enough for Microsoft, but Linux desktop 
projects cater to a very different clientele. 


 
   I understand that there is an option to turn these ghost characters on,
  or to turn them off.
  GOOD! Show me how ?
 
 In the editor, press F9, go to Options and then General. Then outside of
 the editor go to Options and Save Setup - this will ensure the
 behavior is saved for future Midnight Commander sessions. 

Right. More detailed explanation in my reply. 

 
 Given that it can be turned off, is there still a problem here? I can
 understand it would be a serious usability issue if one can't and your
 grievances would have a lot more weight, but I think it's fine as it is
 as long as the user can choose it. I suppose one could argue which
 should be the default mode.

As I said, I would wish for a third option. Namely, that I can see the 
invisible characters, but the mouse will not turn them into visible 
characters if I use it to copy something. Most ideal of all, of course, 
would be that it copies them while preserving their fundamental, invisible 
but functional nature. Perhaps it really would be too difficult to write 
the code which can do this. But, hey, I can still wish.


 
  No. My requiremet trumps yours.
  The most primitive requirement is UNIQUE.
  All further fancy-facilities are merely ONE of an infinite fad posibility.
 
 And some of those fancy-facilities is why people use Midnight
 Commander. 

Indeed. There are after all other file managers, especially related to the 
big desktop projects for example. I don't think that I have ever seen a 
one of them which works so well and I am not interested in using them even 
in the X environment. 

 
 Also, I'll add that Midnight Commander lets you use a different editor
 if mcedit doesn't suit your needs, which makes things much more flexible
 for the user. 

Also true, of course. And one can even hard wire this as an option in 
the configuration for MC, too. 

[...] (cute story, BTW. I don't teach astronomy, but I do teach 
mathematics and I can see things like that from both sides of the desk)


Re: mc Digest, Vol 102, Issue 3

2012-10-12 Thread chris glur
Sure, there are applications for the ghost-tabs.
But paste-ability must take precedence over your special example,
because it's a more basic operation.
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Re: mc Digest, Vol 102, Issue 3

2012-10-12 Thread Theodore Kilgore


On Fri, 12 Oct 2012, chris glur wrote:

 Sure, there are applications for the ghost-tabs.
 But paste-ability must take precedence over your special example,
 because it's a more basic operation.
 

Chris,

In a more ideal world we would be able to have both of

1. The ghost tabs and ghost single spaces show up in the editor

2. The ghost tabs and ghost single space characters are not transferred 
anywhere else when mouse-paste is done.

In my understanding, there is already a third choice which I would say is 
an imperfect solution. Namely, I understand that there is an option to 
turn these ghost characters on, or to turn them off. But this is a 
separate operation. Namely, if one were going to use it to paste something 
from a file where the ghost characters are turned on then one has to do a 
reconfiguration (something with F9 and doing something with the config for 
mcedit) and then make the pasting operation, and then turn right around 
and turn the ghost characters back on. But this is obviously an 
inconvenience and it would be much nicer if we had a config option which 
lets us do both (1) and (2) above, without confronting the need to 
re-configure mcedit twice in order to get the copying job done.

As to your statement But paste-ability must take precedence over your 
special example, because it's a more basic operation. I am in fact not 
sure that I agree at all. Which do you spend more of your time doing? 
Editing files, or copying pieces of what you are editing to some other 
place? Me, I spend more time with editing the files. And if what I am 
editing is code, which is often the case, then I really do not want the 
hidden characters to be turned off and no way to turn them on. That would 
render relatively useless an editor which I have come to rely on for much 
of that work, which would make me unhappy.

But I really do suspect that it ought to be possible, somehow, to combine 
my two desires, above. After all, the hidden characters do indeed show up 
as ghosts already in the file opened in mcedit. Why can not an option be 
implemented which will pick up everything else with a mouse-copy but will 
just not pick up the ghost-characters? I myself am not sufficiently 
familiar with the internals of the MC code to look into this, sorry to 
say. But it sure would be a nice feature if we had it.

Theodore Kilgore



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Re: mc Digest, Vol 102, Issue 3

2012-10-11 Thread chris glur
Can we switch-off mcedit's ghost tab marks ?
So that when we paste like:---
   -i  --ignore-case
--  Ignore case differences in file contents.

   --ignore-file-name-case
--  Ignore case when comparing file names.
--
  we don't carry the spurious
--
  which are apparently supposed to show that tabs were used.

Too smart-ass facilities, which are for artistic only reasons,
and can't be switched off are of NEGATIVE value: like auto-indent,
or absurdly breaking words, like be-cause just to get
news-paper-like uniformly-spaced-columns, or *.pdf when.
plain-text is adequate and better.

BUG !! After using spell check via mcedit,.
cursor-moving-keys cause characters to be written.
And amazingly this fault stays with the file, even after
it's saved and re-opened later. So it looks as if an
attribute, like.
interpret all cursor-arrows as eg. AB..
is carried with THAT previously ispelled-file.
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Re: mc Digest, Vol 102, Issue 3

2012-10-11 Thread Theodore Kilgore


On Thu, 11 Oct 2012, chris glur wrote:

 Can we switch-off mcedit's ghost tab marks ?
 So that when we paste like:---
-i  --ignore-case
 --  Ignore case differences in file contents.
 
--ignore-file-name-case
 --  Ignore case when comparing file names.
 --
   we don't carry the spurious
 --
   which are apparently supposed to show that tabs were used.

Yes, they do represent tabs and they are not exactly spurious. There is 
a problem which I wish were fixed, as described in the next paragraph, but 
they are quite useful nevertheless. Have you ever written code using 
mcedit? For example, code for the kernel, where using the space bar to 
create indentation is a big no-no, an explicit violation of the kernel 
coding style, and it will get your code patch rejected? And as to the 
question of sticking in invisible characters, such as a small . to 
signify one use of the space bar, that can be important, too. For example, 
if you indentation looks like  instead of  you have used 
eight hits on the space bar instead of two tabs. Fix it. Moreover, another 
of the big no-nos in kernel coding is a trailing whitespace at the end 
of a line. If you have committed this, which is very easy to do, then your 
one whitespace character shows up at the end of the line as a trailing . 
in mcedit. Delete it. For kernel coding style, the last visible character 
on the line is supposed to be followed immediately by a carriage return 
and then you see nothing trailing the text at the end of the line. But in 
both of these circumstances if the invisible characters show up in the 
file in no way at all, then how is it possible to find them and fix the 
mistakes? It isn't.

The above issues are reason enough to have these two items to show up in 
an editor, if that editor is going to be used for coding. They are thus 
definitely not present for artistic only reasons.

This being said, imagine the following scenario in which the presence of 
these features is definitely bad:

You are writing some program, where the two features I itemized are a big 
help in doing everything right. You want to extract some lines of code 
from that work and mouse-copy it into an e-mail which you are sending to 
someone else, perhaps intending for the receiving party either to make 
some intelligent comments about those lines, or asking him to drop it into 
his local copy and try out what you did. So, you copy into the e-mail 
using the mouse. And lo and behold every indented line of the code starts 
with  because somehow the mouse is not able to distinguish this,
which shows up in faint white characters in mcedit, from text which 
really is there and is visible. Most definitely, that is an irritation. 
Similar bad afflictions occur if one is going to mouse-copy some lines of 
code from one file to another, too.

Thus, to me what would appear to be the very nicest solution that I can 
imagine would be to have a setting where the invisible characters show up 
in mcedit but if one is going to do mouse cut-and-paste then the mouse 
does not see the invisible characters and makes no attempt to copy them. 
I understand that it is possible to turn the showing of invisible 
characters on or off, but I would ask for more, possibly a third setting 
in which they show up and then automatically they do not get sent along as 
ordinary, visible characters if portions of the file are copied with the 
mouse.

 
 Too smart-ass facilities, which are for artistic only reasons,
 and can't be switched off are of NEGATIVE value: like auto-indent,
 or absurdly breaking words, like be-cause just to get
 news-paper-like uniformly-spaced-columns, or *.pdf when.
 plain-text is adequate and better.
 
 BUG !! After using spell check via mcedit,.
 cursor-moving-keys cause characters to be written.
 And amazingly this fault stays with the file, even after
 it's saved and re-opened later. So it looks as if an
 attribute, like.
 interpret all cursor-arrows as eg. AB..
 is carried with THAT previously ispelled-file.

Yes, that does sound bad. I never experienced it. I tend to avoid using 
spell-check because I am old-fashioned and do not trust a program to do 
that kind of work. But if what you describe is happening I would agree it 
is a bug. 

However, my main point was that there are good, user-friendly reasons for 
having some of the invisible characters in a file to be semi-visible in 
an editor. Now if only the mouse could be trained not to copy them ...

Theodore Kilgore
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