Re: Problem in removing the invisible brackets of a link

[Alain.Cochard@unistra.fr]

Nicolas Goaziou writes on Fri 29 Jun 2018 15:39:

 > > The manual says:
 > >
 > >       If you place the cursor at the beginning or just behind the end
 > >    of the displayed text and press <BACKSPACE>, you will remove the
 > >    (invisible) bracket at that location.
 > >
 > > The problem for me it that it depends on the way I arrive at those
 > > locations.  For example, for '[[xx]]', seen as 'xx' underlined, if I
 > > have the cursor on the right of it and have it go towards the left
 > > just after the second 'x' and press <BACKSPACE>, then the behavior is
 > > as I expect (I see '[[xx]'), but, if I have the cursor on the left and
 > > have it go to towards the right just after the second 'x' and press
 > > <BACKSPACE>, then I see a single underlined 'x' (after a second
 > > <BACKSPACE> I see '[[]]').
 > >
 > > Is this normal?  [...]

 > Yes, it is normal Emacs behaviour. See (info "(elisp) Invisible
 > Text").

OK, thanks a lot.

> I guess we could clarify the manual. Suggestions welcome.

I guess you could simply add a footnote after "location." in the
excerpt above.

- Minimalist: See (info "(elisp) Invisible Text").

- Hardly more: For more details, see (info "(elisp) Invisible Text").

- Facetious: If unexpected behavior occurs, check (info "(elisp)
  Invisible Text").

- Too kind: Beware, the precise behavior depends on how the cursor has
  been placed there -- see (info "(elisp) Invisible Text").

 > > Incidentally, is there a way to have things like [[xx]] behave as
 > > plain text?

 > Yes, there is. Insert a zero width space after the opening
 > brackets.

Thanks again.  I would also advocate some mention of this in the
manual (if not already there somewhere, which I did not find).  I was
thinking about an extra sentence at the end of "4.1 Link format";
something like:

   To have ‘[[text]]’ constructs behave as plain text and not as
   links, insert a zero-width space (C-x 8 <RET> ZERO WIDTH SPACE
   <RET>) between the opening (or the closing) brackets.

However, I still don't see how this can be something convenient for
massive and frequent use.  In my case, I often yank and work on code
fragments written in the Mathematica language, for which the [[]]
syntax is used for list indexing.  Well, I guess I'll have to learn to
live with that...

 > > (I am not talking about literal links which are still
 > > understood as links.)  I have tried 'quote', 'verse', 'verbatim',
 > > 'comment', 'example', and org code block: none work.

 > =[[xx]]= and ~[[xx]]= are not links; try to export them.

Indeed.  Thanks once more.

Regards

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