NEAT IDEA (long message, though)

[David M. J. Saslav <saz at MIT-OZ>]

Say Philip -- what do you think of an editor capability whereby one is able
to MARK A REGION of text by OUTLINING IT with the mouse???  Clearly it would
have ascii character resolution,   but it would still win big!  So traversing
the same path as would mark the following region in regular ZMACS (caps are the characters
in the region)


          point pushed here
	        |
		|
;;;		V
;;;four score anD SEVEN YEARS AGO
;;;OUR FATHERS WENT TO THE LOCAL SALOON TO BUY
;;;DRINKS FOR THE HOUSE AND IN GENERAL WHOOP IT UP
;;;FOUND OUT THAT THERE WAS A WAR GOING ON AND           *
;;;had to pass on the drinks but they still had         /\
;;;a good time watching mtv or whatever.                 L_______________________
;;;										|
										|
						And (depressed) mouse moved to here


might instead mark out the following region instead (but others are possible,
since this idea is PATH DEPENDENT, naturally)



          point pushed here
	        |
		|
;;;		V
;;;four score anD SEVEN YEARS AGO
;;;our fathers wENT TO THE LOCAL SALOON TO BUY
;;;drinks for tHE HOUSE AND IN GENERAL WHOOP IT UP
;;;found out tHAT THERE WAS A WAR GOING ON AND           *
;;;had to pass ON THE DRINKS BUT THEY STILL HAD         /\
;;;a good time wATCHING MTV OR WHATEVER.                 L_______________________
;;;										|
								mouse ends up here, but it passed through
								the body of the text as indicated by the caps,
								so the region is as indicated. 

It seems to me that this feature would be very useful for manipulating COMMENTED REGIONS, because
there isn't a lot one can do to cut and paste a commented text section (or a comment in a Lisp function,
more importantly!!)  without running into one or more semi-colon screws along the way.

Do you follow me?  Find me in one of these evenings and I'll show you exactly what I mean.

Saz