Re: [emacs-humanities] visual filling?

[M . ‘quintus’ Gülker]

Am Mittwoch, dem 17. August 2022 schrieb Oliver Taylor:
> Are you talking about visually wrapping lines at a location other than
> the window edge?

No, I do want the lines to wrap at the window edge. What I want is to
enlarge the inter-word spaces when I use visual-line-mode so that the
text is visually justified over the entire window width.

Let me give an example. Assume there is this text in the file on disk as a 
single
long line:

    Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consetetur sadipscing elitr, sed diam nonumy 
eirmod tempor invidunt ut labore et dolore magna aliquyam erat, sed diam 
voluptua. At vero eos et accusam et justo duo dolores et ea rebum. Stet clita 
kasd gubergren, no sea takimata sanctus est Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet. Lorem 
ipsum dolor sit amet, consetetur sadipscing elitr, sed diam nonumy eirmod 
tempor invidunt ut labore et dolore magna aliquyam erat, sed diam voluptua. At 
vero eos et accusam et justo duo dolores et ea rebum. Stet clita kasd 
gubergren, no sea takimata sanctus est Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet.

Now when I visit this file in Emacs, I want that text to become this,
where the ASCII art denotes the window edges (note especially the right
edge):

    +-----------------------------------------------------------------+
    |Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consetetur sadipscing elitr, sed diam|
    |nonumy eirmod tempor invidunt ut  labore et dolore magna aliquyam|
    |erat, sed  diam voluptua.  At vero  eos et  accusam et  justo duo|
    |dolores et ea  rebum. Stet clita kasd gubergren,  no sea takimata|
    |sanctus est  Lorem ipsum  dolor sit amet.  Lorem ipsum  dolor sit|
    |amet, consetetur sadipscing elitr,  sed diam nonumy eirmod tempor|
    |invidunt  ut  labore et  dolore  magna  aliquyam erat,  sed  diam|
    |voluptua.  At vero  eos et  accusam et  justo duo  dolores et  ea|
    |rebum. Stet  clita kasd  gubergren, no  sea takimata  sanctus est|
    |Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet.

However, these changes should not make it to the file when saved -- the
file should remain unchanged and contain only the long line shown above.
In addition, it should work with proportional fonts.

The reason why I want this is twofold. For one, as I outlined in my
earlier message, I want to utilise the available window space most
efficiently so that I can see as much text as possible without
decreasing font size (because I often work with long paragraphs of text,
as is custom in the Law discipline). This is is covered quite nicely
with visual-line-mode and the use of a proportional font. Second,
however, this combination results in the visually unpleasant effect of a
ragged-right text, which is inappropriate for long paragraphs in
proportional fonts – those should be justified. And this is the cause
why I ask this question here.

The whole thing arose because at work I am forced to use Word on Windows
and to my surprise I found it easier to reason about the writing when I
used Word. I could not believe that, observed myself and finally found
the culprit: my work Word is set up to justify all text with Times New
Roman, which causes it to display on the same screen estate much more
context than my Emacs buffers did. On the very same text I could see
about 4 paragraphs at once in Word, where I could barely see 1 within
Emacs. I then looked into how to fix this and came up with
visual-line-mode, long lines on disk, and a proportional font (not
Times, because that one does not really fit for longer lines, though, I
accept the decrease in screen estate efficiency). That did go great
lengths and I can now see as much context in my Emacs windows as I can
have in Word (if not more), which has made writing in Emacs quite a bit
more pleasant to me. But the result is still not justified text, and
that is why I am asking.

I do split my Emacs frame into two windows horizontally usually, because
overly long lines are very hard to understand. I found the resulting
amount of context (with visual-line-mode and long lines) a good
compromise.

  -quintus

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