Re: What should a folded element look like?

On 2004-09-20, James Clark <jjc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>  On Sun, 2004-09-19 at 04:19, Peter Heslin wrote:
> > I suggest that folds should be allowed to be nested, and that closing
> > or opening a fold should not alter the folded state of its subfolds.
> 
>  Agreed, although there should probably be a command to unfold
>  completely.

Yes, and another to recursively close all folds and subfolds.  Then
you can go ahead and selectively open only those bits of the buffer
you want to see.

Another UI issue is the question of whether horizontal motion into a
fold should open it (via a post-command-hook).  Reveal-mode and the
latest release of AUCTeX do this (as does Vim).  I like it, but I have
my doubts about whether folds should close up again when point leaves
the fold.  This is fine in AUCTeX, when you have a small region, such
as a footnote, or some other Latex macro, which easily fits on the
screen, and you can clearly see what is happening when the fold closes
again automatically.  But when you have large chunks of text in a fold
-- more than one screen's worth -- the buffer becomes bewildering to
navigate.  If you happen to scroll too far, all of a sudden the text
you were looking at disappears -- you can't scroll back again without
reopening the fold.  That's my experience with outline-mode used in
conjunction with reveal-mode, anyway.

Vim auto-reveals folds on horizontal entry, but does not close them
again on exit, if memory serves.  Another nice feature of Vim's
folding is that the closed fold tells you how many lines are hidden,
so you know the difference between a <div> that holds 5 lines and one
that holds 5000.  Since I'm at it, another nice feature of Vim is that
the whole headline of a closed fold is highlighted, which makes them
more visible than when you have only a little ellipsis at the end of
the line.  foldingo.el implements something like this in Emacs.

Peter



------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> 
$9.95 domain names from Yahoo!. Register anything.
http://us.click.yahoo.com/J8kdrA/y20IAA/yQLSAA/2U_rlB/TM
--------------------------------------------------------------------~-> 

 
Yahoo! Groups Links

<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
    http://groups.yahoo.com/group/emacs-nxml-mode/

<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
    emacs-nxml-mode-unsubscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
    http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/