[TxMt] Re: Re: Insert hard wraps

[Steve King]

On Mon, 16 Apr 2007, Robert W. Kuhn wrote:

> Allan Odgaard:
>
>> Hard wrap is not a built-in feature.

Will it be in 2.0?  Pretty please?

>> You can fake it by overloading
>> space with a macro that reflows the current paragraph, maybe
>> conditionally only when TM_COLUMN_NUMBER is above 80 (i.e. use a
>> command instead -- there is a scope for paragraphs in text, making it
>> possible to have the command take meta.paragraph as input).
>
> ..and do not forget to post the script ;-)

You can't really do it with a macro.  I tried making a macro that inserts 
a space then reformats the paragraph.  This doesn't work if the cursor's 
at the end of a line (as it will be probably 95% of the time when this 
macro is triggered) because the reformat function deletes trailing 
whitespace.  So the paragraph gets reformatted, but you lose the space you 
just inserted!

So I tried reversing the operations.  I made a macro that reformats the 
paragraph, then inserts the space.  That's better, but not perfect.  Say 
you're wrapping at column 80.  You end a word exactly at column 80 and 
type a space.  The reformat occurs, but of course the line doesn't change 
(since it hasn't gone beyond the wrap margin).  Then a space is entered, 
and you start typing the next word.  This word is now hanging off the 
right-hand side of the screen in columns 81+.  But all will be right again 
after you finish the word and hit space, right?  Well, yeah, unless the 
word is the last one in the paragraph and you end it with a newline.

This method also fails in that you can't add multiple spaces at the end of 
a line.  Reformat, add a space. Reformat again. The space you just added 
is eaten.  Add a space.  Net result: No change.

Entering multiple spaces within a line is even worse.  The reformatter 
merges multiple spaces into a single space anywhere within the paragraph. 
This leads to the reformatter shifting the paragraph around, but the 
cursor doesn't move.  It stays in the same column, regardless of how the 
words move around it.  So you've got a double-space somewhere, and the 
cursor is just to the left of a word.  Hit space.  The reformatter removes 
the double-space, shifting the line one character to the left.  Now your 
cursor is just *after* the first character of the word, not just before 
it.  Insert a space.  You've just turned 'word' into 'w ord'.

(And if you're old enough to have learned to type on a manual typewriter, 
the habit of adding two spaces at the end of a sentence is just too deeply 
ingrained to change.  As you can see in the above paragraphs!)

You'd need to write a command to do this, and that's adding more overhead 
to the space character than I'm willing to do.

Allan, a question about that: When a command runs, does it spawn a new OS 
process or does it run in a thread within the TextMate process?  It seems 
that if you're running any command that starts with a shebang (#!) line 
you'd have to fork a new process to load the specified command 
interpreter.  If that's so, then it's *way* too much CPU and disk overhead 
to do every time you hit space!

-- 
Steve King, <steve at narbat.com>