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: <86ilk6uzf4.fsf@nobiot.com>
References: <86ilk6uzf4.fsf@nobiot.com>
Date: Thu, 27 Oct 2022 06:43:42 +0300
Message-ID: <87zgdi6idt.fsf@protesilaos.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain

> From: Noboru Ota <me@nobiot.com>
> Date: Wed, 26 Oct 2022 22:01:51 +0200
>
> Made patches to make the current version compatible with 27.2.  I have
> tested both cases where user option 'denote-backlilnks-show-context' is
> on and off for both 27.2 and 28.1.
>
> I have noted this in the commit text: TODO: It is likely that these two
> functions can be made into one to be comptabile for both Emacs versions.
> Further work is requried to refactor them.

Hello again Noboru,

I implemented some of your patches, but left out those that (i) are for
Emacs 27 and (ii) prettify the backlinks' buffer.

This is the current commit log, since our last exchange:

*  (HEAD -> main, origin/main, gitlab-mirror/main) ee69dae 2022-10-27 06:28:19 +0300 Protesilaos Stavrou: Update sample configuration, per b313dfc
*  7c22231 2022-10-27 06:26:39 +0300 Protesilaos Stavrou: Update minimum required Emacs version to 28.1
*  b313dfc 2022-10-27 06:23:12 +0300 Protesilaos Stavrou: Update backlinks' buffer documentation in the manual
*  9b6cf70 2022-10-27 06:16:01 +0300 Protesilaos Stavrou: Add wrapper motions for backlinks' buffer
*  f90f79f 2022-10-27 05:13:42 +0300 Protesilaos Stavrou: Make denote-link-fontify-backlinks obsolete
*  3da08ea 2022-10-27 05:13:12 +0300 Protesilaos Stavrou: Reword denote-backlilnks-show-context docstring
*  d304d79 2022-10-27 05:11:27 +0300 Protesilaos Stavrou: Reword denote--retrieve-files-in-xrefs doc string
*  bdc94d3 2022-10-26 18:30:31 +0200 Noboru Ota: Add user option to use original backlinks buffer or with context
*  bbdcc49 2022-10-26 18:07:08 +0200 Noboru Ota: Fix 'denote-link-find-backlink'

Please let me know if you are okay with them.  The "wrapper motions" are
an alternative approach to the "n" and "p" keys in the backlinks'
buffer, so that we retain the old behaviour but otherwise keep all of
the Xref functionality.  My hesitation with the xref--xref-buffer-mode
was exaggerated, as I noticed the double hyphens and thought they
signified something we should not touch.  But the way it is implemented
suggests that the maintainers simply forgot to remove the extra dash:
this code is reliable.

Also, I think it is better to have something that "just works" than ask
users to bind their own keys to the denote-backlilnks-mode-map.

I believe the way I implemented those wrappers accommodates both the old
backlinks' buffer and the new one with the added context.  Please let me
know if this is true on your end.

About Emacs 27, I think it is better we avoid all those workarounds and
just depend on Emacs 28.  No-one reported the error which indicates that
this new requirement should not pose any problems.

With regard to the prettification of the backlinks' buffer, I decided to
deprecate the denote-link-fontify-backlinks in order to avoid confusion
caused by the presence of too many options: we just handle this
internally when denote-backlinks-show-context is nil.  The reason is
that such an option only worked nicely in the generic backlinks' buffer,
but caused subtle presentation problems in the Xref-capable buffer with
the added context.  I like the standard Xref style, as it clearly
distinguishes file names from the context, while it also highlights the
matching identifier (particularly useful for multiple matches).

The other tweaks I made are stylistic (rewording phrases and the like).

I believe I have not missed anything from the latest set of patches you
sent.  If I did, it was not intentional, and please tell me about it.

All the best,
Prot

-- 
Protesilaos Stavrou
https://protesilaos.com