Re: Preserving sanity in Emacs [Re: rampant region highlighting]

[Lennart Borgman (gmail)]

Alan Mackenzie wrote:
> > I acknowledge that having the point always on-screen has benefits too
> > (though e.g. a fringe indicator could "point towards the offscreen
> > point" to address some concerns there...), but what if I'm just
> > scrolling up to look at something?  Martin's hack ensured that I can
> > scroll away to have a look, and the point will reliably be where I left
> > it when I scrolled back.
>
> The functions you're talking about are fulfilled in Emacs by the mark,
> not the point.  I frequently scoll a bit to look at things.  Then I
> scroll back to get where I was, unless I want to stay where I've got to.
>
> The point is, by your mechanism, having scrolled away from point (leaving
> point off the screen), how do you then indicate where on the screen you
> want point to be set to, and how do you set point there?  The general
> Emacs answer is that you indicate a position by setting point.  Hmm.
> We're going round in circles.  (You're presumably going to say "you click
> the mouse to set point."  This violates the Emacs principle that
> everything must be doable without a mouse.)

Another way to look at this would perhaps be too:

- Regard the buffer in a kind of read-only state when the window-point 
is outside the window ;-)

- If a command concerns the current buffer and it is not a scroll 
command then just bring back window-point to where it was inside the 
window before scrolling. Don't do more (ie do not execute the command), 
just tell that point was outside of the window therefore have been 
brought back.