Subject: bug#76176: 30.0.93; Suggested command: narrow-to-thing-at-point

From: Phil Sainty <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 18 Feb 2025 14:21:45 +1300

On 2025-02-18 13:32, Richard Stallman wrote:
> I see nothing outright _bad_ about this idea, but is it really
> useful enough to be worth the added complexity of one more
> command?
> 
> There are lots of ways in Emacs of selecting some region, and
> los of hings to do wiih the region.  Pick onr from column A
> and one from columnA B, and you could define a command.  But
> we don't want to fill that whole rectangle with rarely used
> commands.  Why is this one worth adding?

We have a handful of single-purpose narrow-to-* commands already
(which I use frequently and consider to be more convenient than
"select region and narrow to region").  I saw this as a way to
add lots of new options with *only* a single new command.

The "C-x n" prefix is not crowded, so I don't think it's a
problem to add the new key binding; and the function itself
also acts as a very simple helper for users to define other
THING-specific "narrow-to-*" commands for their own use.
E.g. if someone wants a separate `narrow-to-string' command
then the body is simply (narrow-to-thing-at-point 'string),
which I think is nice.

And of course it supports custom/future THINGs for free.

I think it's worth adding for all those reasons.

-Phil