Re: [O] org-metaup destructive when region active?

[Nicolas Goaziou]

Hello,

Adam Porter <address@hidden> writes:

> I noticed that using org-metaup when a region is active seems to behave
> in an unintuitive and potentially dangerous way.  I would expect that it
> would behave similarly to org-refile when a region is active, but it
> doesn't.
>
> Looking at the code, I see that it does this:
>
> ┌────
> │ (let* ((a (min (region-beginning) (region-end)))
> │        (b (1- (max (region-beginning) (region-end))))
> │        (c (save-excursion (goto-char a)
> │                           (move-beginning-of-line 0)))
> │        (d (save-excursion (goto-char a)
> │                           (move-end-of-line 0) (point))))
> │   (transpose-regions a b c d)
> │   (goto-char c))
> └────
>
> It was difficult for me to understand what that would do, and the
> docstring of transpose-regions didn't help.  So I did a small
> experiment, defining that code as a command and calling it in this
> buffer (where the region is marked with brackets):
>
> ┌────
> │ abcd
> │ [efgh
> │ hijk]
> │ lmno
> └────
>
> The result was this:
>
> ┌────
> │ efgh
> │ hij
> │ abcdk
> │ lmno
> └────

This is now fixed. Thank you.

> Now for an example with Org headings, before:
>
> ┌────
> │ * A
> │ ** A1
> │ ** A2
> │ [* B
> │ ** B1
> │ ** B2]
> │ * C
> │ ** C1
> │ ** C2
> └────
>
> After:
>
> ┌────
> │ * A
> │ ** A1
> │ * B
> │ ** B1
> │ ** B
> │ ** A22
> │ * C
> │ ** C1
> │ ** C2

This is partly fixed, i.e., there is no more "2" left over.

> Ideally it would act on all headings in the region, but given the
> complexity of doing that correctly, would it be a good first step to
> simply do nothing when org-metaup is called and a region is active?  It
> would at least avoid corrupting data.  I think that's a non-trivial
> risk, because when I noticed this behavior, it was in a partially
> collapsed outline, and some of the headings in the region (and their
> entry content) seemed to vanish altogether; I only recovered them with
> undo.

I have no strong opinion on the subject. However, I agree this feature,
i.e., `org-metaup' (or `org-metadown') on a region can be removed
altogether, since this is but a glorified kill'n'yank process.

Nevertheless, I'm Cc'ing Bastien for his opinion, as he introduced the
feature in the first place.

I didn't write tests for the function because its specifications are not
completely defined yet.

Regards,

-- 
Nicolas Goaziou