Re: [NEWBIE] Questions

[Kai Großjohann]

Robert Pollard <rpollard@apple.com> writes:

> 1.    Is there a way to adjust the indent space provided by the
>           auto-fill functionality between the topic number and the
>           text.  As in the following example:
>       1.   lkajsdf lsdfl sadfl dfljasldflkjsdflk asld fls
>                  jsdfj asdfl lasdflj asdflj lsdf l jasdf lj sf  s
>       Is there a way to adjust the space between the number 1. and
>       the text? It appears to be a default amount.

You have to type it yourself.  Hm.  And when you then hit M-q, it
gets deleted, I think.  Let me try...

1.  lskdjf lkdjf lkdjf ldkfj ldfkjsldf kjsd lfksjd flksdjf lkdsjf
            lkdfj ldfkjld fkjsd lfksjdf lkj

Yep.  Paragraph looked as follows before I hit M-q:

1.          lskdjf lkdjf lkdjf ldkfj ldfkjsldf kjsd lfksjd flksdjf
            lkdsjf lkdfj ldfkjld fkjsd lfksjdf lkj

The two spaces after the "1." come from the fact that Emacs thinks
it's a sentence-end period and hence it makes two spaces.  Emacs
always assumes two spaces after a sentence, when you do M-q.

> 2.    If you have an outline and you need to move topics around is
>           there a way to renumber the topics?
>       i.e.
>       2.    lkjasdf alkjdasf alsdf alsdjfl asldf
>       1.    asdfsld fl sadf ls dfl lasdfl asdf
>       3.    kljasdf lasdjf ljasdf asdj flkj asdf

Maybe someone has written a Lisp package to do this.  I vaguely
recall something like this.  Maybe you can look in the Emacs Lisp
List?  http://www.anc.ed.ac.uk/~stephen/emacs/ell.html

> 3.    Why would a auto-fill not format the paragraph the way it does
>           99% of the other topics?
>       i.e.
>       The way it normally formats the paragraphs is:
>       1.   asdfj asdfjljasdf lkjsdfj slkdjflj sdf sdfj lsdjf
>             sdf ksdf ;sadkf; ksdfk;sldk f;lsdl f;slk df;lask f
>       On 2 occasions it formatted like:
>       1.   sjdfj asdfsldjfljasld flkj asdfj alsdj fkasdlfj las
>       sdjflasdjf lkjsdfk asdj lksdjflk asdlkf lsflk sdlfk sl
>       I had to manually insert the tab/spaces for the second line.

It depends on the input.  Hitting M-q takes the spaces from the
second line of the paragraph.  And paragraphs, as you know, are
delimited by empty lines.  So suppose you have this:

1.  lskdjf
    sldkjf
2.  slkdfj

Then if you add another line after the third one (via auto-fill), the
line will start with four spaces.  But if you start with the
following situation, it will start with no space:

1.  lskdjf
lskdjf
2.  lskdjf

> 4.    I prefer not to have the paragraph indicators as a line feed
>           for end of the paragraph as it appears to be on default.

There is paragraph-indent-text-mode.  It assumes that a line starting
with whitespace starts a paragraph.

> I much prefer a carriage return to indicate the end of the
> paragraph.  As it stands, you have to have a blank line between
> paragraphs to indicate the end of the paragraph.

I don't understand this.  Emacs almost never uses carriage return
(^M) in a buffer.  And even inside a paragraph, every line ends with
a newline.

There is longlines.el which can remove "superfluous" newlines
(within paragraphs) when writing the file and it re-adds them when
reading the file.

>       2.      Why is there a different value for global and the
>                   current buffer?

Depending on the mode, it makes sense to have a different definition
of the start of a paragraph.  For example, when editing itemized
environments in LaTeX, like so:

\begin{itemize}
\item first item
\item second item.  This one is longer and has more than one
  line.
\item third item.
\end{itemize}

Then it would be good to consider each item a paragraph, even though
they are not delimited by empty lines.  So LaTeX mode sets up
paragraph-start and paragraph-separate to make this happen.

> It appears there may be some kind of continuation pattern being used
> for each variable.  I do understand basic regular expressions but I
> don't fully understand these patterns.

Continuation pattern?

> 5.    I am running version 21.2.1 under Cygwin on an Intel system.
>           Certain key equivalents that I have gotten used to over the
>           time that I have been using Emacs are not working anymore.
>           I have to type the commands in instead.
> They are:
> C-x C-c       Quit Emacs
> C-h v Describe a variable
> C-h i         Info docs
> C-<spc>       Set a mark
>
> Why would these key equivalents not work?  This is my first time for
> using Emacs in Cygwin but I thought the key equivalents would be the
> same on all systems.

I have no idea why they might fail.

Maybe you can use NT-Emacs, a native Windows executable?
http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/windows/ntemacs.html
-- 
file-error; Data: (Opening input file no such file or directory ~/.signature)