annotate etc/enriched.doc @ 11193:b0a12ea680c1

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<<center><<bold><<x-bg-color><<param>gray<</param><<x-color><<param>blue<</param>Enriched:

A WYSIWYG enriched-text editing environment for GNU Emacs


<</x-color><</x-bg-color><</bold><</center><<bold>INTRODUCTION 


<</bold><<indent>This package, along with the <<bold>facemenu<</bold> package, is the beginning of a WYSIWYG
("what you see is what you get") Emacs mode for editing <<italic>enriched text: <</italic>text with
different faces, colors, etc.  Facemenu allows you to add faces (such as
<<bold>boldface<</bold>,  <<italic>italics<</italic>, and <<underline>underlining<</underline>) your documents, while <<bold>enriched<</bold> allows you to
save the documents with those "text properties" included.  The format in which
they are saved is called <<italic>text/enriched<</italic>, and is defined as part of the MIME
standard, so that your documents are transportable (even through email) to many
other systems. 


Not all systems will be able to recreate all of the features of your document,
but they will get as close as possible.  For systems that do not understand it at
all, the text of the document should still be legible; the reader can simply
ignore the annotations specifying face changes and the like. 


<</indent><<bold>INSTALLATION and STARTUP <</bold>


<<indent>The <<fixed>enriched.el<</fixed> file should be installed somewhere that emacs will find it (ie,
one of the directories on emacs's <<fixed>load-path <</fixed>variable), and byte-compiled for
speed. 


The documentation below assumes that you have my <<fixed>facemenu.el<</fixed> (which is included
in recent versions of emacs).  You may also find it useful to have Jim Thompson's
<<fixed>ps-print.el<</fixed>, which will allow you to print out buffers including their faces
(unfortunately it is not currently able to deal with merged faces; hopefully it
will be revised soon.)  These two files should also be installed into your lisp
directory and byte-compiled. 


Put the following code into your .emacs file to automatically load enriched when
needed:


<<indent><<fixed>(autoload 'enriched-mode "enriched" nil t)<</fixed><</indent>


<<bold>Enriched <</bold>puts an identifying header into files it writes, which allows it  to
recognize any emacs-generated <<italic>text/enriched<</italic> file and put itself into the proper
mode.  If you get a file from some other source, however, such as through the
mail, you may have to enter enriched-mode manually:


<<indent><<fixed>M-x enriched-mode<</fixed><</indent>


You may be asked a couple of questions at this point: 


<<italic>Does the buffer need to be translated now?<</italic>  If the buffer contains <<italic>text/enriched
<</italic>data which needs to be translated into a readable document with fonts and such,
then answer "yes".  If you are putting a new document into text/enriched format
for the first time, then say "no". 


<<italic>Reformat for current display width?<</italic>  If emacs knows that the document was created
with the same display width that is currently in effect, it will trust the line
breaks that are in the file, which saves some time.  If it was saved at a
different width, or emacs doesn't know what width it was saved at, then it may
ask whether it should reformat.  Actually it does not ask by default; it just
goes ahead and fills.  But if you want it to ask, you can set the variable
<<fixed>enriched-fill-after-visiting<</fixed> to <<fixed>'ask<</fixed>. 


In the future, other modes such as mail and news may recognize messages that are
enriched text, and automatically call on <<bold>enriched<</bold> to display them for you.  


<</indent><<bold>WHAT IS ENCODED<</bold>


<<indent>Aside from the text itself, various properties are saved.  More will eventually
be added, so that you will be able to save and read just about anything that can
be displayed in an emacs frame.  Following is the list of properties that are
currently understood; each is covered in more detail below. 


<<bold>Faces:<</bold> default, <<bold>bold<</bold>, <<italic>italic<</italic>, <<underline>underline<</underline>, <<fixed>fixed<</fixed>, etc. 

<<bold>Colors:<</bold> <<x-color><<param>red<</param><<x-bg-color><<param>DarkSlateGray<</param>any<</x-bg-color><</x-color><<x-bg-color><<param>DarkSlateGray<</param><<x-color><<param>orange<</param>thing<</x-color> <<x-color><<param>yellow<</param>your<</x-color><<x-color><<param>green<</param> screen<</x-color><<x-color><<param>blue<</param> <</x-color><<x-color><<param>light blue<</param>can<</x-color><<x-color><<param>violet<</param> display... <</x-color><</x-bg-color>

<<bold>Newlines:<</bold> <<indent>Which ones are real ("hard") newlines, and which can be changed to fit
lines into the ma<</indent>rgins.       

<<bold>Margins:<</bold> can be indented on the left or right. 

<<bold>Justification <</bold><<indent>(whether lines should be flush with the left margin, the right
margin, fully justified, centered, or left alo<</indent>ne). 

<<bold>Excerpts: "<</bold><<excerpt>For quoted material." <</excerpt>

<<bold>Read-only<</bold> regions. 


<</indent><<bold>FACES 


<</bold><<indent>The easiest way to add a face to a region is to use the <<bold>facemenu <</bold>package.  This
defines a menu obtained by clicking the right mouse button while holding the
control key.  For example, to make a word boldface, you could select the word by
double-clicking on it, then hold C-mouse-3 and select <<italic>Bold<</italic> from the <<italic>Face
<</italic><</indent>sub-menu<<indent>.  Selecting a face from the menu when the region is not active will apply
that face to whatever you type next. 


<</indent><<bold>NEWLINES and PARAGRAPHS 


<</bold><<indent><<italic>Text/enriched<</italic> format distinguishes between <<underline>hard<</underline> newlines and <<underline>soft <</underline>newlines.  Hard
newlines are used to separate paragraphs, or items in a list, or anywhere that
must be a line break no matter what the margins are.  Soft newlines are the ones
inserted in order to fit text between the margins.  Auto-fill-mode and
enriched-mode's fill functions insert soft newlines as necessary, but hard
newlines are only inserted by direct request, such as using the return key or the
<<fixed>C-o (open-line)<</fixed> function.  


<</indent><<bold>INDENTATION 


<</bold><<indent>Indentation of regions of the document can be flexibly controlled.  The face menu
contains an <<italic>Indent<</italic> item, which indents the region by the width of 4 characters
and an <<italic>UnIndent <</italic>item which removes 4 character-widths of indentation.  All of the
text paragraphs in this file are singly indented relative to the headings, for
example.  In addition, you can indent and unindent the <<italic>right <</italic>margin though use of
the <<italic>IndentRight<</italic> and <<italic>UnindentRight <</italic>menu items.  The indentation commands can be
used repeatedly to get further levels of indentation.  There are also shortcut
commands to set the left and right margins directly. 

The basic editing commands in enriched-mode have been modified as necessary to
maintain proper indentation, but if it gets messed up, you can use <<fixed>C-q<</fixed> to
reformat the current paragraph.  This may be necessary, for example, after
yanking or pasting text into the buffer.  Eventually all commands should respect
indentation. <<flushleft><<indentright><<indentright><<indentright><<indentright>


<</indentright>Not <<indent>only whole paragraphs can be indented, but in fact any region.
This makes it possible to have hanging-indents on paragraphs like
this one: it was accomplished by selecting the region starting
after the first word of the paragraph and going to the end of the
paragraph, and indenting that.  <</indent><</indentright><</indentright><</indentright><<indent>Also notice that this paragraph had been
indented on the right until the beginning of this sentence, when it resumed
normal w<</indent>i<</flushleft><</indent><<flushleft>dth. 


<<bold>JUSTIFICATION<<indent>


<</indent><</bold><</flushleft><<indent><<nofill>Several styles of justification are possible, the simplest being <<italic>unfilled. 
<</italic>This means that your lines will be left as you write them. 
This paragraph, for instance, is unfilled.
It was written with one sentence on a line. 
<<bold>Enriched <</bold>will not change that, no matter what size display it is shown on. 
There is no hard/soft newline distinction in unfilled text. 

The most common (for English) style is <<italic>FlushLeft.  <</italic>This means
lines are aligned at the left margin but left uneven at the
right.

<</nofill><<italic><<flushright>FlushRight<</flushright><</italic><<flushright>, as you may have guessed, makes each line flush with the right margin,
but not necessarily the left.

This is usually, but by no means necessarily, used for headings. 

This paragraph is FlushRight. 


<</flushright><<italic><<flushboth>FlushBoth <</flushboth><</italic><<flushboth>regions, which are sometimes called "fully justified" (or, confusingly,
"right justified") are aligned evenly on both edges, so that the text on the page
has a smooth appearance as in a book or newspaper article.  Unfortunately this
does not look as nice with a fixed-width font as it does in a
proportionally-spaced printed document; the extra spaces that are needed on the
screen can make it hard to read. <<indentright><<indentright><<indentright><<indentright> 


<<indent><<indent><<indent><<indent>The narrower the column, the uglier <<italic>FlushBoth
<</italic>text will be.  If you think <<italic>flushboth <</italic>paragraphs
look pretty, though, you can set
<<fixed>enriched-default-justification <</fixed>to <<fixed>'both <</fixed>to
justify everything that is not otherwise
specified. 


<</indent><</indent><</indent><</indent><</indentright><</indentright><</indentright><</indentright><</flushboth><<bold><<center>Center

<</center><</bold><<center>You can probably guess what <<italic>center <</italic>justification is for.

The normal center-paragraph key, M-S, can be used to turn on center justification
in enriched-mode.  M-j also brings up a justification menu. 


<</center><<flushboth>Note that justification can only be changed for complete paragraphs (ie, a
justified region must start and end at hard newlines).  The menu items in the
"Justification" menu will all operate on the current paragraph, or, if the region
is active, on all paragraphs which are inside or overlapping the region. 


<</flushboth><</indent><<bold>EXCERPTS<</bold>


<<excerpt><<indent>This is an example of an excerpt.  You can use them for quoted parts of other
people's email messages and the like.  Currently it just displays as italics
(unless some <<bold>other<</bold> style is in effect), but this can be changed (see
<<underline>Customization<</underline> below). <</indent><</excerpt>


<<bold>DEBUGGING<</bold>


<<indent>The function <<fixed>enriched-show-codes<</fixed> can be helpful in figuring out what is going if
things don't seem to be working.  The function can highlight (with a blue or gray
background) various items of interest.  <</indent>Type <<fixed>C<<indent>-c C-s<</indent><</fixed><<indent>, then what should be
highlighted:


<<indent><<bold>indent:<<indent> <</indent><</bold><<indent>Highlight the indentation at the beginning of each line. <</indent>

<<bold>margin: <</bold>Highlight regions that are indented. 

<<bold>newline: <</bold>Highlight hard newlines. 

<<bold>none: <</bold>Turn off all highlighting. <<bold><<excerpt>


<</excerpt><</bold><</indent><</indent><<bold>CUSTOMIZATION


<</bold><<indent>-<<indent> Set the default faces to things you like.  The faces named <<fixed>fixed <</fixed>and <<excerpt>excerpt,
<</excerpt>especially, can be set to your liking. <</indent>

- <<indent>User-preference variables: <<fixed>enriched-default-right-margin,
enriched-default-justification, enriched-verbose,
enriched-auto-save-interval<</fixed><<bold>, <</bold>and <<fixed>enriched-fill-after-visiting <</fixed>(mentioned
above)<<bold>.  <</bold>See their documentation for	det<</indent>ails. 

- <<indent>You can add annotations for your own text properties by making additions to
<<fixed>enriched-annotation-alist<</fixed>.  Note that the standard requires you to name your
annotation starting<<italic> "x-" <</italic>(as in <<italic>"x-read-only"<</italic>).  Please send me any such
additions that you think might be of general interest so that I can include
them in the distribution. 

<</indent>- <<indent>My eventual hope is that people will use the basic code in this file to
implement more of the various file formats that are in common use, so that
emacs will understand them all and be able to edit them with a common
interface.  If you are interested in taking on the project of implementing a
format, let me know.  The code attempts to be as general as possible; a lot
of different formats can be defined just by setting up the lists of
properties to save and how to represent them in the file. 


<</indent><</indent><<bold>TO-DO LIST


<</bold><<indent><<italic>[Feel free to work on these and send me the results!] <</italic>

- Be more tolerant of malformed files. 

- Make the indentation work more seamlessly and robustly:

<<indent>+ Create<<indent> an aggressive auto-fill function that will keep the paragraph
properly filled all the time, without slowing down editing too much. <</indent>

+ Refill after yank. 

+ <<indent>Make deleting a newline also delete the indentation following it. <</indent>

+ Never let point enter indentation?? 

+<<indent> Optional never-let-things-get-unfilled (ok for fast terminals). <</indent>

<</indent>- Do the right thing for insert-file. 

- Notice and re-fill when window changes widths (optionally).  - Nicer formatting
for excerpts. 

- Interface w/ GNUS, VM, RMAIL. 

- For documentation, make INFO aware of text/enriched format. 

-<<indent> Have another set of alists for reading and writing RTF, etc (this will take
work not only on the alists, of course, but also on the code for interpreting
them). 



<</indent><</indent><<bold>Final Notes:


<</bold><<indent>The MIME standard is defined in internet RFC 1521; text/enriched is defined in
RFC 1563.  Details on obtaining these documents via FTP or email may be obtained
by sending an email message to <<fixed>[e-mail]<</fixed> with the message body:

<<indent> <<fixed>help: ways_to_get_rfcs <</fixed> <</indent>


This code and documentation is under development.  The most current version
should always be available from:

<<indent><<fixed>/[e-mail]:pub/boris/enriched.shar<</fixed>

<</indent>It is helpful to make sure you have the newest version before reporting a bug. 

<</indent>Please send any and all comments to:


<<bold><<x-color><<param>blue<</param>Boris Goldowsky <</x-color><</bold><<fixed><<<<[e-mail]><</fixed><<x-color><<param>blue<</param>

October 1994











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