Re: Buffers with buffers (transclusion)

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Suhail Singh <suhailsingh247@gmail.com>
> Cc: Suhail Singh <suhailsingh247@gmail.com>,  vekazanov@gmail.com,
>   jimjoe@gmx.net,  emacs-devel@gnu.org
> Date: Thu, 17 Oct 2024 12:28:30 -0400
> 
> Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:
> 
> >> Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:
> >> 
> >> > E.g., if you type text between the end of SRC1 and the beginning of
> >> > SRC2, to which source is this added?
> >> 
> >> Couldn't this be obviated by there being a read-only substrate, embedded
> >> within which are editable regions corresponding to SRC1 and SRC2?  I.e.,
> >> SRC1 and SRC2 are separated by a region of text that cannot be modified.
> >
> > I don't see how will that help, nor how it will resolve the
> > difficulties I was describing.
> 
> It would resolve the difficulties by disallowing the premise.  I.e., one
> wouldn't be allowed to "type text between the end of SRC1 and the
> beginning of SRC2".

That is already a possible solution for the conceptual problem I
described.  And I'm not sure such a solution is reasonable for Emacs.

> >> From my perspective, the value of a single such "meta" buffer is purely
> >> in the UI.
> >
> > Then using adjacent windows solves that, IMO.
> 
> It's not clear that when you say "solves that", that we mean the same
> thing by "that".  Consider all the buffer navigation and modification
> commands.  If a desired criterion is for the UI to not require the user
> to remember alternate commands/keybindings, how would that work?

One possibility is to have a minor mode where C-n at the last visible
line of a window will switch to the window below.  And similarly with
C-f and C-b.

IOW, there could be an infinite number of possible solutions for the
ease of moving between the different portions of the text, which do
not require them to be in the same buffer.

> For instance, the idea would be for M-x occur in the "meta" buffer
> to do something like multi-occur.  How would this work with adjacent
> windows?

See above (if multi-occur for some reason is not enough already).

> On a related note, part of the buffer-in-buffer idea (to me) implies a
> way of specifying buffers (and regions therein) of interest.  The
> challenge being in making said specification (somewhat) stable across
> revisions.  I.e., naive linking via absolute line numbers wouldn't be
> sufficient.

What bothers me in this entire discussion is that people are
discussing implementation without first describing the use cases,
requirements, and expectations in enough detail to think about both
the need/importance and possible implementations.