Possiblity to ignore certain lines

[Thaodan]

Some modes post content in the buffer that is read-only and not related to the actual content that the user writes.

For example in have or ERC/Circe the messages sent by other users or for Mastodon the same and the keybinds shown.

[tmalsburg]

I don't have much experience with such modes. Any suggestions as to how this could be implemented? Is it safe to assume that read-only content should always be ignored?

[Thaodan]

Titus von der Malsburg ***@***.***> writes:

I don't have much experience with such modes. Any suggestions as to how this could be implemented?

What about a regex? E.g. ignore everything after ^#.*

Is it safe to assume that read-only content should always be ignored?

I'd assume so?

[tmalsburg]

What about a regex? E.g. ignore everything after ^#.*

I don't think it's that simple. Content after # is not necessarily read-only and should not generally be ignored. In Python, for instance, I'd want to do the opposite: ignore everything that does not follow # because we would like to do language guessing based on the comments, not based on the code.

[Thaodan]

Having the ability to set this per buffer and thous per mode would help enough at first. I'd be fine if read-only content can be ignored. Since depending on the mode the read-only content might indicate the buffer language e.g. the prior messages inside a chat mode.

[tmalsburg]

Tbh, this sounds like a difficult-to-implement feature and it would have to be implemented for different modes separately.

Alternative proposal: How about a way to guess the language only based on the current paragraph, not the entire buffer? Wouldn't this also solve your use case?

[Thaodan]

Titus von der Malsburg ***@***.***> writes:

Tbh, this sounds like a difficult-to-implement feature and it would have to be implemented for different modes separately.

That's why I think a pattern that should be ignore is the simplest solution. The user can set a pattern per mode for themselves. While read-only content could be ignored if so choosen e.g. global or per make-local-variable.

[tmalsburg]

I won't have time to work on this myself, but feel free to sketch an PR.