Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wasatch!cs.utexas.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!gaynor From: gaynor@athos.rutgers.edu (Silver) Newsgroups: comp.editors Subject: Re: why do editors "shrink-wrap" the text? Message-ID: Date: 6 Apr 89 11:19:11 GMT References: <10088@megaron.arizona.edu> <11542@lanl.gov> Distribution: na Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J. Lines: 24 > I want an editor in which the carriage return key is _only_ a cursor > positioning key. No matter what 'mode' the editor is in, I want the carriage > control key to put the cursor at the beginning of the next line - and > _most_especially_NOT_ insert a new line or split the line I was on! > Does gnuemacs do that (without me having to rewrite the keyboard driver or > assign a macro to the carriage return key or something)? Associating functionality with the insertion of a newline (e.g, the automatic justification, indentation, etc.) can save a lot of editing time in the long run. However, I agree that often, one simply wants to insert a newline. For the modes I use most often in GNU Emacs, I bind [RET] to insert a newline with all the bells and whistles, and [LFD] to insert a raw newline. (As a side point, most extension languages are not macro languages. Macros are provided as a way to make fast, primitive, interactive extensions, but they are not the typical modus operandi in the editor machine. Modern editor extension languages are really full-blown languages and should be treated as such.) I took a whack at automating the process, but found the number of breeches in standard nomenclature and coding practices reduced the function to a poor heuristic. Load the file of lisp if necessary (using require or load), and rebind the keys (using define-key). Regards, [Ag] gaynor@rutgers.edu