[no subject]

[Mike McMahon <MMCM at MIT-AI>]

    Date: 02/14/80 08:14:03
    From: GLS at MIT-AI

    (a) Why is it that you cannot type ANY command name that Apropos shows
    you as an extended command?  In particular, it claims that Mail can
    be invoked by ^X M, but I can't do M-X Mail <return>.  I think it would
    all be more intuitive if you could.  If Apropos can find it, so can
    the command parser!
This is quite deliberate, only those extended commands that are meaningful in the
particular environment are present.  For example, M-X List Buffers would not
work inside the (MAIL) editor or the editor top level.  As it happens, M-X Mail
does exist in the new editor.  The C-M-X command will execute any command, whether
it is assigned to a command or belongs in the current environment, of course this
will sometimes cause errors and odd behaviour, so this command is not well advertised.
    (d) Well, I see the point that you might want TAB to realign LISP
    code even when in a comment.  However, the place I always want tabs
    is when in ;;; comments, and usually there is no LISP code on the line.
    So I'll modify my request: I would like LISP mode TAB to simply
    insert a TAB if within a ;;; comment.
I have modified the command i wrote per your previous request to only insert tabs if
the current line begins with a comment.
					   (By extension, I think
    that there is a great deal to be said for having M-Q and C-M-Q
    manage to treat ;;;'s as "transparent" so that one can fill
    paragraphs or indent code that one has put into ;;; comments.
There is a command in the new editor called Fill Long Comment or something that
does a M-Q on the comment lines around point, ignoring the actual ;'s.
    Maybe what I really want is within ;;; comments to get most of the
    effect of being in TEXT mode.  One could imagine wanting LF
    within a ;;; to create a new line and put in ";;; " automatically,
    etc.  Oh well.)
The Indent New Comment Line (M-Line) command will insert ";;; "'s for new comments
if that's how the current line's comment starts.