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From: gaynor@topaz.rutgers.edu (Silver)
Newsgroups: comp.emacs
Subject: Re: narrow to region and vertical regions
Message-ID: <14030@topaz.rutgers.edu>
Date: Mon, 17-Aug-87 21:11:08 EDT
Article-I.D.: topaz.14030
Posted: Mon Aug 17 21:11:08 1987
Date-Received: Wed, 19-Aug-87 01:31:23 EDT
References: <8708172231.AA06560@EDDIE.MIT.EDU>
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.
Lines: 25


Jason Venner (venner@violet.berkeley.edu) writes:
> I sometimes would like to slice out a set of vertical columns in a
> file for viewing, and do not want to modify the buffer.  Has anyone
> tried to do this?

I think the following two functions are what you want, if you do
indeed want to extract a rectangular region from text.

copy-rectangle-to-register:
Copy rectangular region into register REG.
With prefix arg, delete as well.
Called from program, takes four args:
REG, START, END and DELETE-FLAG.
START and END are buffer positions giving two corners of rectangle.

picture-yank-rectangle-from-register:
Overlay rectangle saved in REGISTER.
The rectangle is positioned with upper left corner at point, overwriting
existing text.  With prefix argument, the rectangle is
inserted instead, shifting existing text.  Leaves mark at one corner
of rectangle and point at the other (diagonally opposed) corner.

Enjoy,
Silver