Re: Mail mode

[Günter Milde <milde@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, May 09, 2003 at 06:48:46PM -0400, John E. Davis wrote:
> Günter Milde <milde@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >> Reformatting for comments would be nice. However comments and mail quotes
> >> are two different things, because mail can  be quoted multiple levels
> >> whereas in comments only the first "%" character is significant.
> >
> >However, it should work, as long as the levels are separated by space (i.e.
> >"> >" != ">>")
>
> Also there is no one style for mail quotes.  For example, I have seen
> "#", " : ", ">", "Bill>", "|", .... used for quoting email.
> Nevertheless, some functions could be shared.

... as the problem remains the same. (also many languages define a set of
comment strings (the difference is convention versus norm)). 

A good mailmode could offer a set_comment_for_buffer on the Mode menu, that
overrides the default mail_mode comment strings. 
   (Which would require get_comment_info to look in a buffer_local variable
   for a definition first. Which is BTW sensible for other modes too, so one
   could edit sources that differ from the own preference in their own
   manner) 
It could even implement a "normalize_inded_string" function that tranforms
the above variants to "> ".

> >Furthermore, I thought about making comments a bit more relaxed about the
> >space, i.e.
> >   %variable c =3;
>
> I believe there are some languages where the space is necessary.  For
> example, m4 uses "dnl " to denote a comment.

Of course these languages must have the space still in the comment string (I
suppose they have it in the define_syntax command as well)

The (un)commenting functions will be intelligent about this (don't add a
space if there is one in the definition).

Günter

--
Milde at ife.et.tu-dresden.de

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