[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Daniel Jensen) writes: >>>> I wonder why it's called `universal argument', though... >>> >>> I don't know, C-u is a universal argument but it cannot >>> be /the/ universal argument. We should let M-& be one too. >>> I agree that the name can be more clear on what the command >>> actually does. >> >> So each command would have to implement support for `M-&'? > > No, but it's used like C-u in that it modifies how a > command operates. It's not an actual argument, so it > might make sense to call it something else.
Okay. I see what you mean now. > I take back that it's not a good idea to extend it to use > a prefix or the region, I didn't really think about it. > If it's not in the way, then I don't mind. Cool. > This means maybe that it should not do anything special > when there is no prefix and no region. Do you mean `no prefix, no region, and no marking'? > I don't know if it is always good to kill the marking > before iterating through the lines -- can you think of > examples of when it messes things up or when it helps not > to mess up? First of all, this is a difficult and subtle argument about a rather obscure command. None of it is obvious in any way. Nonetheless, I want this feature to be as good as possible. Thank you for engaging in the discussion. Here is my view. I think `M-&' should mean "use the prefix/region/marking convention," and I believe that `M-&' should "consume" the p/r/m, just as commands like `e' and `c' and `k' do --- if it doesn't, there will sometimes be two mechanisms trying to use the p/r/m at the same time, mutually interfering. With commands that do not interfere, there is no problem. For example, `M-& r' would do the same whether we deactivate the p/r/m _before_ or _after_ running `r' on each track line, because `r' does not itself care about the p/r/m. For a command such as `k', there is a subtle difference. If `M-&' leaves the p/r/m, `M-& k' will be the same as `k', given some active p/r/m. I would like `M-& k' to behave exactly as would moving to each track line in the p/r/m in turn and hitting `k' (i.e., I want it to produce separate kills instead of a clump kill). This would be more _consistent_, because `M-& <foo>' would always run the p/r/m-stipped command _once_ for each line in the p/r/m, instead of running the full command once for each line in the p/r/m, which will sometimes result in N actions, sometimes in N x M actions, and sometimes will just be weird. (Imagine a command that uses the active marking in some way, but does not kill it. Unless `M-&' kills the marking before executing the command, such a command would use _the whole marking_, in some way, _once for each_ marked track line.) However, it would also be more _useful_, simply because it is more useful for `M-& k' to do something other than `k' than it is for the two commands to behave exactly the same. People will not type `M-& <foo>' for no reason. People will type it expecting `M-&' to force some convention on `<foo>'. That's my intuition about this and what I would expect. What do you think? (In the end, `M-& r', which is probably representative of the most common use case for this feature, will work the same.) Best regards, -- Daniel Brockman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> _______________________________________________ bongo-devel mailing list [email protected] http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bongo-devel
