Re: Removing Fonts From Files

[Jeffrey Mark Siskind <Qobi@zermatt.lcs.mit.edu>]

    Date: Sun, 17 Jan 88 14:33 EST
    From: David A. Moon <Moon@STONY-BROOK.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
        Date: Fri, 15 Jan 88 09:59:35 CST
        From: Daniel A Haug <aihaug@AUSTIN.LOCKHEED.COM>
        What I would like to do is maintain my "pretty" version on the symbolics,
        and dump the "non-pretty" version to the sun when necessary, by simply
        executing m-X "Write File <filename> With Character Styles Removed", or
        something.

    In Zmacs, you can do c-X H c-X c-J <return> to change all characters in
    the buffer to the default style, followed by c-X H m-X Write Region
    <return> pathname <return> to write the file to where you want it.  Of
    course this destroys the character styles in your buffer, so if you want
    to continue editing the "pretty" version, you have to read it in again
    with m-X Revert Buffer.

I am interested in doing exactly the opposite. I have never got into the habit
of using character styles in my Lisp code for various reasons. I would like to
start though. I don't want to have to change styles manually however. I know
that modes like m-X Electric Character Style Lock Mode will put comments in
italic and once upon a time (before Genera 7.0) m-X Electric Def Lock Mode put
the name of a definition into bold. That was all fine and dandy except for one
problem: There was no way to convert a file that was written without those
modes into one which used those modes.

I like using the autoindent feature of Zmacs, one of the best habits to
get into is using <Line> instead of <Return> while editing Lisp code.
But there is an escape hatch for reformating a file when it is not
formatted nicely: c-m-Q or c-X H c-m-\. This can happen for a variety
of reasons, either I start our with a file that is not formatted properly
or the indenting gets messed up in the process of editting. It there an
analogous way of "canonicalizing" the character styles in a Lisp file?
If not then there should be. A general rule to be followed is whenever
you provide an automatic formater of any kind that works interactively
on input, it should be accompanied with a reformater for the same standard.
        Jeff

P. S. I would also like a a command that "un-shift-lock-ifies" a file.
I find that Symbolics source code written in m-X Electric Shift Lock mode
is very unreadable so when I m-. some code I would like to be able to
downshift the case of code while preserving the case of strings and comments.
For symetry you should provide the opposite command which "shift-lock-ifies"
a file too as per the above argument.