Re: RE: [External] : Re: Adding custom providers for thingatpt.el (was: [PATCH] Add support for 'thing-at-point' to get URL at point)

[Jim Porter]

On 4/30/2024 2:10 PM, Drew Adams wrote:
> > I've also fixed a bug in EWW and bug-reference-mode
> > where it would return nil for (thing-at-point 'url)
> > if point was at the *end* of a URL.
>
> By "at the end" I assume you really mean just
> _after_ a URL, i.e., no longer on/at the URL.
>
> FWIW, that's actually _superior_ behavior.
>
> Unfortunately however, Emacs has chosen the
> behavior you describe here:
>
> > It's now consistent with how 'thing-at-point'
> > works by default.
>
> > (If you have two consecutive URLs and point
> > is between them...it'll prefer the second one.)
>
> Which is better!  It's what "at point" means.
[snip]
> See bug #9300, " `bounds-of-thing-at-point'
> does not return nil when just after THING".

I agree overall that your proposed behavior is more correct, and it's 
probably how I'd have implemented 'thing-at-point' if I were doing it 
from scratch. However, I think an even worse outcome than 
"thing-at-point looks at point or before-point" is "sometimes 
thing-at-point just looks at point, and other times it looks at point or 
before-point" (which is what it does today).

I'd even be open to something like a 'thing-at-point-is-strict' defvar 
that people could let-bind as wanted, but I'm not going to *argue* for 
that myself.

Ultimately though, this patch is really just about providing the 
necessary defcustoms for org-mode to be able to use 'thing-at-point' 
(and for Ihor to feel ok about it ;)). Changing 'thing-at-point's 
behavior should probably be handled separately, especially since there'd 
be an uphill battle to revisit the decision in bug#9300.