FR: Yank rectangle, not as a rectangle but as a string.

[Jambunathan K]

FR: Yank rectangle, not as a rectangle but as a string.

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Use Case:

I was trying to Org-tablize a two-column glossary.  Glossary runs to 22
printed pages and after being Org-tablized has (I believe) 3000 entries
or so.

The glosssary.txt is created with

    pdftotext -layout -nopgbrk glossary.pdf


See the attached files and screenshots.

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Long story short:

1. C-x C-f kbd-macro.el.  Install that macro.
2. C-x C-f glossary.txt
3. M-x fixup-glossary
4. You will end up with glossary-final.txt.


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Crux of the matter:

The interesting portion in the macro is this sequence

?\C-x ?r ?k
?\C-x ?b ?t ?e ?m ?p ?- ?1 return
?\C-x ?r ?y
?\C-x ?h
?\C-w
?\C-x ?b return
down ?\C-y

where I rely on a temporary buffer to "string-ize" a rectangle.

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So, my question is this: Is there a way to do yank a rectangle as a
string?

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Interesting Titbit:

This is the "inverse" operation of what the Info node says

| (info "(emacs) Rectangles")
| 
|    For example, you can convert two single-column lists into a
| double-column list by killing one of the single-column lists as a
| rectangle, and then yanking it beside the other list.

french-english-glossary.png
Description: PNG image

glossary.txt
Description: Text document

kbd-macro.el
Description: application/emacs-lisp

glossary-final.txt
Description: Text document