Re: keymap in yank-excluded-properties

[Kim F. Storm]

Richard Stallman <address@hidden> writes:

>     Is it generally a good idea not to copy keymap text property?
> 
> Yes--very much so.  In most cases that leads to very confusing
> results.
> 
> What's correct to do for yanking a table?  Yanking the whole table
> ought to preserve its properties so that the table still functions as
> one.  Yanking a part of the table which can act as a complete table in
> itself should also do that.  However, yanking some of the text within
> the table, which is less than a whole table entry, should forget that
> it came from a table and treat it like any ordinary text.
> 
> Does that make sense to you?  If so, can you look for a design to
> achieve those results?

Perhaps a new text property `yank-function' which takes a function as value.

`yank' will look for that property on kill-ring elements and call the
function with one argument: the string (or rectangle?) to yank.  The
function is then responsible for inserting the string in the buffer
and remove any unwanted properties [i.e. it is expected to do the
actual insertion].

A table could have this property set to a function which check that 
the string to insert is really a complete table -- and keep the 
properties in that case [using insert] -- or remove the properties 
otherwise [using insert-for-yank].

This is a simple, but flexible concept which may be used for other
purposes as well; for example, text killed by a "special" function
[e.g. kill-rectangle] may be later inserted using plain C-y by another
special function [e.g. insert-rectangle].

-- 
Kim F. Storm <address@hidden> http://www.cua.dk