Taming Emacs' text mode wrapping and indenting (Shallow Thoughts)

Taming Emacs' text mode wrapping and indenting

To wrap long lines, or not to wrap? It's always a dilemma. Automatic wrapping is great when you're hammering away typing lots of text. But it's infuriating when you're trying to format something yourself and the editor decides it wants to line-wrap a little too early.

Although of course you can set the wrapping width, Emacs has a tendency to wrap early -- especially when you hit return. All too often, I'll be typing away at a long line, get to the end of the sentence and paragraph with the last word on the same line with the rest -- then realize that as soon as I hit return, Emacs is going to move that last word to a line by itself. Drives me nuts!

And the solution turns out to be so simple. The Return key, "\C-m". was bound to the (newline) function (you can find out by typing M-x, then describe-key, then hitting Return). Apparently (newline) re-wraps the current line before inserting a line break. But I just wanted it to insert a line break.

No problem -- just bind "C-m" to (insert "\n").

But there's a second way, too, if you don't want to rebind: there's a magic internal emacs table you can change.

(set-char-table-range auto-fill-chars 10 nil)

But wait -- there's one other thing I want to fix in text mode.

Automatic indent is another one of those features that's very convenient ... except when it's not.

If I have some text like:

First point:
  - subpoint a
  - subpoint b

then it's handy if, when I hit Return after subpoint a, emacs indents to the right level for subpoint b. But what happens when I get to the end of that list?

First point:
  - subpoint a
  - subpoint b

Second point:
  - subpoint c

When I hit Return after subpoint b, Emacs quite reasonably indents two spaces. If I immediately type another Return, Emacs sensibly deletes the two spaces it just inserted, opens a new line -- but then it indents that new line another two spaces.

After a blank line, I always want to start at the beginning, not indented at all.

Here's how to fix that. Define a function that will be called whenever you hit return in text mode. That function tests whether the caret comes immediately after a blank line, or at the beginning of the file. It indents except in those two cases; and in neither case does it re-wrap the current line.

;; In text mode, I don't want it auto-indenting for the first
;; line in the file, or lines following blank lines.
;; Everywhere else is okay.
(defun newline-and-text-indent ()
  "Insert a newline, then indent the next line sensibly for text"
  (interactive)
  (cond
   ;; Beginning of buffer, or beginning of an existing line, don't indent:
   ((or (bobp) (bolp)) (newline))

   ;; If we're on a whitespace-only line,
   ((and (eolp)
         (save-excursion (re-search-backward "^\\(\\s \\)*$"
                                             (line-beginning-position) t)))
    ;; ... delete the whitespace, then add another newline:
    (kill-line 0)
    (newline))

   ;; Else (not on whitespace-only) insert a newline,
   ;; then add the appropriate indent:
   (t (insert "\n")
      (indent-according-to-mode))
   ))

Then tell emacs to call that function when it sees the Return key in text mode:

(defun text-indent-hook ()
  (local-set-key "\C-m" 'newline-and-text-indent)
  )
(setq text-mode-hook 'text-indent-hook)

Finally, this is great for HTML mode too, if you get irritated at not being able to put an <a href="longurl"> all on one line:

(defun html-hook ()
  (local-set-key "\C-m" (lambda () (interactive) (insert "\n")))
  )
(setq sgml-mode-hook 'html-hook)

Tags: emacs, editors, tips
[ 11:29 Jan 13, 2010    More linux/editors | permalink to this entry | ]