GNU bug report logs - #55828
Add command to edit a rectangle arbitrarily in a separate buffer

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Message #5 received at submit <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Phil Sainty <psainty <at> orcon.net.nz>
To: bug-gnu-emacs <at> gnu.org
Cc: Michael Heerdegen <michael_heerdegen <at> web.de>
Subject: Add command to edit a rectangle arbitrarily in a separate buffer
Date: Tue, 07 Jun 2022 21:24:30 +1200

[Message part 1 (text/plain, inline)]

At https://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=55234#11 Michael 
Heerdegen wrote:
> I implemented a command that lets me edit a rectangular region
> in a separate buffer

I've had one of those for years as well, and always intended to
work on it some more and propose it as a standard feature.

I bind it to "C-x r e", with "C-c C-c" to write the rectangle back
to the original buffer after editing.

There are a lot of special-purpose "do X to a rectangle" commands,
but I think a command which lets you do *absolutely anything* to
a rectangle is extremely useful, and a buffer with only that text
gives you that ability pretty trivially.  I think Emacs should have
this in its standard rectangle toolkit; so here's a new feature
request for that.

For reference I've attached my version.  It's old code which knows
nothing of `rectangle-mark-mode' or other newer things, and it has
the notable flaw of introducing trailing whitespace if the rectangular
region had intersected any line endings (something I'd intended to
address before suggesting this); but it's always done the job when
I've needed it, so I'm attaching it as-is (aside from renaming it to
`rectangle-edit' which seems to be an available name-space for such
a feature).

It sounds to me as if Michael's code does more than mine -- at minimum
mine does not ask what to do with modified dimensions as described at
https://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=55234#17 (I just use the
original dimensions), so I'd be interested to see that.


-Phil

[rectangle-edit.el (text/x-lisp, attachment)]

Message #8 received at 55828 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Juri Linkov <juri <at> linkov.net>
To: Phil Sainty <psainty <at> orcon.net.nz>
Cc: Michael Heerdegen <michael_heerdegen <at> web.de>, 55828 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: Re: bug#55828: Add command to edit a rectangle arbitrarily in a
 separate buffer
Date: Wed, 08 Jun 2022 09:58:55 +0300

> It sounds to me as if Michael's code does more than mine -- at minimum
> mine does not ask what to do with modified dimensions as described at
> https://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=55234#17 (I just use the
> original dimensions), so I'd be interested to see that.

As Michael pointed out, it could be based on string-edit,
so rectangle-edit could just call string-edit with the rectangle
as a string, and success-callback to replace the original rectangle
with the edited string.

Message #11 received at 55828 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Phil Sainty <psainty <at> orcon.net.nz>
To: Juri Linkov <juri <at> linkov.net>
Cc: Michael Heerdegen <michael_heerdegen <at> web.de>, 55828 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: Re: bug#55828: Add command to edit a rectangle arbitrarily in a
 separate buffer
Date: Wed, 08 Jun 2022 21:57:52 +1200

On 2022-06-08 18:58, Juri Linkov wrote:
> As Michael pointed out, it could be based on string-edit,

Perhaps.  I just compiled from master to have a look at this,
and I don't know whether that's an obvious way to go.  I'm not
seeing a particularly nice way to pass the information about the
source of the rectangle through to the success callback, unless
that function was a closure generated at call time, or the data
was passed as text properties, both of which seem a bit ugly to
me in this scenario (the latter more so than the former, but
neither feels ideal).

Perhaps `string-edit' is missing a `data' argument to be passed
along to the callback functions?

There's also no obvious facility for preparing the edit buffer.
In my command I'm setting the syntax-table to match the original
buffer, and setting fill-column to the rectangle width, both of
which seem like sensible things for the purpose at hand; but
there's no way of doing such things with `string-edit' other
than `string-edit-mode-hook' which I think is going to be
awkward to deal with for such a purpose.  I guess you can
let-bind the hook variable around the `string-edit' call to add
a set-up function, but it again feels like there should be a
nicer option.

It does provide some boilerplate, but I'm not sure it makes
sense to shoe-horn the rectangle command into that framework
in its current form.  Maybe with some enhancements it makes
sense, though.


-Phil

Message #14 received at 55828 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Juri Linkov <juri <at> linkov.net>
To: Phil Sainty <psainty <at> orcon.net.nz>
Cc: Michael Heerdegen <michael_heerdegen <at> web.de>, 55828 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: Re: bug#55828: Add command to edit a rectangle arbitrarily in a
 separate buffer
Date: Wed, 08 Jun 2022 19:18:01 +0300

> It does provide some boilerplate, but I'm not sure it makes
> sense to shoe-horn the rectangle command into that framework
> in its current form.  Maybe with some enhancements it makes
> sense, though.

The initial version of string-edit is only 1 month old.
So you are welcome to propose any improvements that
will make it more useful for different use cases.

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