On Sat, Nov 23, 2013 at 3:24 AM, Eli Zaretskii <
address@hidden> wrote:
>
> [Why private?]
Fumble fingered.
> > 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.
Perhaps you are saying that a viable design could extend faces with additional attributes to support those concepts. Hmm... I will give that some thought. At the very least, without introduction of any new terminology, it will introduce yet another Humpty-Dumpty-esque "When
I use a word it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less" for emacs new comers.
/john