Subject: bug#6248: 23.1; justify (esc q) broken in Latex mode

From: Stefan Monnier <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 27 May 2010 00:24:11 -0400

>     I tend to view latex as text with intermixed code so I see this
> differently.  I can see an argument for why text inside of a specific
> environment might need to be indented specially, I don't see why that
> would apply to top-level text outside of any environment.

So you're saying that filling should not use indentation when filling
top-level text and that would solve your use case?

Hmm... I see some problems with that:
- your original message reported that the whole paragraph was indented
  (apparently by 4 spaces), so either that paragraph was not "outside
  of any environment" or there is something I don't understand.
- that would introduce unexpected difference between otherwise similar
  circumstances (top-level or not-top-level text).

>     I suspect we're going to agree to disagree on this one; feel free to
> close this bug.

Yes, I don't think we can satisfy everyone without someone having to do
some extra configuration to express his preference (which is what
fill-indent-according-to-mode is for).

But I could offer another "way out", based on your example text: the
indentation code could potentially be modified to try and recognize
paragraph-beginnings and indent them by some extra N spaces, so as to
look like:

         This is a sample paragraph of text that is long enough that it
     may need to be filled.  Here's a second sentence to continue the
     paragraph.  And one more sentence for good measure.

I personally wouldn't like it, so it would still need to be controlled
by some configuration variable.  And I'm not sure it could be made
reliable enough.

        Stefan