Subject: bug#56796: 29.0.50; Hard newlines not respected in code comments?

From: Stefan Monnier <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 29 Jul 2022 11:47:09 -0400

> More generally: I'm not sure how common this pattern is but I tend to do
>
>     ;; TODO/FIXME: Something...
>     ;; Ideas and thoughts on how to clear it here.
>
> Now if you do M-q there, your neatly arranged text is destroyed.  (I am
> probably biased) I also catch this pattern in the Emacs source tree as
> well.

It never occurred to me to use hard newlines for such cases.  What I use
instead is either:
- add extra newlines to mark the paragraph boundaries to use
  (that's just as easy as adding hard newlines, but requires removing
  those extra newlines afterward).
- Select the intended paragraph rather than rely on M-q's automatic
  decision of what's a paragraph.

Hard newlines are a good idea, for this use-case, indeed, tho it would
be even better if we could somehow represent that info in the text
itself so it's properly saved into the file.

        Stefan