On 04/08/2011 10:21 PM, Warp wrote:
> Orchid XP v8<voi### [at] devnull>  wrote:
>> Actually, I notice the same artifact here as I did with "fill mode". In
>> that mode, whenever you finish typing something, Emacs wraps it at 70
>> characters for you. Which is nice and all, but you know what? As I'm
>> typing this post right now, Thunderbird is going the same thing
>> /interactively/. It doesn't wait until I've stopped typing and than
>> rearrange all my text. It arranges it as I type, so I can immediately
>> see what the result will be like.
>
>    I hate text editors that do some kind of automatic line splitting without
> asking (especially if you can't turn the feature off).

I have my text editor to do automatic line wrapping. Note that it only 
wraps the *display*, however. The actual file on disk is unchanged.

> I like emacs because
> it doesn't change anything in the file you open unless you explicitly ask
> it to. You can open a *binary* file in emacs, save it, and it will be
> identical to the original. The same cannot be said from most other text
> editors (especially in Windows) which do tons of "smart" things automatically
> (such as convert newline characters, unprintable characters, etc.)

My text editor allows you to *display* the line ends, so you can 
visually see which lines end with LF, which ones are CR, and also 
arbitrary combinations thereof. It can also display other non-printing 
characters if you wish (which is sometimes useful).

>    In fact, thanks to this property, you can use emacs as a hex editor.
> It has a built-in hex-editing mode. (Yes, some other text editors have
> that too. Not many, though.)

Now that might actually be useful. I've yet to find any hex editors.

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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