Re: Emacs as word processor

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Sat, 23 Nov 2013 10:13:38 -0500
> From: John Yates <address@hidden>
> Cc: Emacs developers <address@hidden>
> 
> > > Fri, 22 Nov 2013 16:47:05 -0500, John Yates <address@hidden>
> wrote:
> > >
> > > I want to be able to say "This is a chapter title" or "This is a step
> in a
> > > recipe" or - most commonly - "This is a top level paragraph with no
> > > particular distinctive property".  After that I want my tool have a
> basic
> > > sense of how each item ought to be formatted.  More importantly I want
> it
> > > to allow me to say, all elements of a particular type that I may have
> > > created heretofore as well as any I may create in the future should be
> > > formatted in some new manner.  I think of this as a declarative UI.
> > >
> > > If I understond your description correctly your model is one in which
> (as
> > > an inveterate emacs user :-) I would compose a command to say "find all
> > > items matching the following pattern and change each's formatting
> property
> > > P from X to Y".  I think of that as an imperative UI.  My biggest
> stumbling
> > > block is that I do not understand how it allows me to express my
> intentions
> > > relative to content yet to be entered.
> >
> > We need to have both.  For the former, we have face customization,
> > which does exactly what you describe.
> 
> 
> Are you saying that I can customize an emacs face to specify
> inter-paragraph space? a bullet glyph or numbering style? first line and
> subsequent line indentation?  That is definitely not the case with my
> emacs, current as of Nov 8th.

That's unfair: you said nothing about those features in the text to
which I responded.  You just talked about the difference between
imperative and declarative approaches to specifying attributes.  Now
you've changed the subject, so I no longer understand what are we
discussing.

If you are saying that these features don't exist in Emacs, I agree:
they don't.  But I don't see the significance of that fact, since
everybody agrees that Emacs is not a WYSIWYG word processor at this
time.

If you are saying that these features could never be part of a face
spec, then I don't think I agree; please explain why you think so.