From: Protesilaos Stavrou <info@protesilaos.com>
To: Noboru Ota <me@nobiot.com>, ~protesilaos/denote@lists.sr.ht
Subject: Re: [PATCH] Display context of identifier in backlinks buffer with
 xref
In-Reply-To: <86r0yvzm12.fsf@nobiot.com>
References: <86r0yvzm12.fsf@nobiot.com>
Date: Wed, 26 Oct 2022 06:04:04 +0300
Message-ID: <87o7tzl1zv.fsf@protesilaos.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain

> From: Noboru Ota <me@nobiot.com>
> Date: Tue, 25 Oct 2022 22:27:37 +0200
>
> Hi Prot,

Good day Noboru,

> I am sending another idea.  This patch is also related to the
> discussion I have seen in another thread:
>
>    Show some context in the Backlinksbuffer
> https://lists.sr.ht/~protesilaos/denote/%3C74322f7a-f3a3-b115-ffa6-aad237f8f765%40eh-is.de%3E#%3C87czaz21zy.fsf@protesilaos.com%3E
>
> You may considered this change to be too large a change to consider, or goes
> against the simplicity and contained scope of Denote's design philosophy.  In
> this case, there is no issue on my end; I will understand and respect your
> approach.  I would like to show a possibility for a discussion.

I installed your patch and pushed it to the main branch as commit
fcefc1d.  Thank you!  I now need to update the manual accordingly.

Regarding the scope: I think your change here improves the interface of
what we had available.  That is fine.

> To facilitate the conversation, I'm also attaching some screen shots
> to show what the result of the changes will look like.  Note that I
> have completely personalized the file naming schema to my own one but
> the functionality is unchanged (except for this patch). You will see
> that in the screen shots.  I have also added the following minor modes
> to the backlinks-mode:
>
> (add-hook 'denote-backlinks-mode-hook #'olivetti-mode)
> (add-hook 'denote-backlinks-mode-hook #'outline-minor-mode)

I like it!  I now wonder if we should update the user option
'denote-link-backlinks-display-buffer-action' to make it easier for the
user to display the buffer in a side window.  I say we keep the default
of showing it below the current window, just so we do not disrupt too
many established patterns at once.

* * *

Some comments about the patch:

1. Yes, I like the option to re-use the backlinks buffer.  This can
   probably be combined with the aforementioned display buffer action to
   make the buffer dedicated to its window.

2. I am not familiar with xref--xref-buffer-mode, though deriving the
   'denote-backlinks-mode' from it feels wrong because it is a private
   form.  Is this change away from special-mode necessary?  Do we have
   another option?

3. We need to find a workaround for 'xref--apply-truncation' so that we
   can continue to depend on Emacs 27.2.

4. Perhaps we can prettify the backlinks' buffer further by adding more
   space and/or faces to it.

All the best,
Prot

-- 
Protesilaos Stavrou
https://protesilaos.com