Re: Writing enriched text

[Oscar Figueiredo <Oscar.Figueiredo@di.epfl.ch>]

>>>>> "Alan" == Alan Shutko <ats@acm.org> writes:

  Alan> Kai.Grossjohann@CS.Uni-Dortmund.DE writes:
  >> Or, we need a way to dissect a buffer into areas each of which is
  >> edited in a different mode.  OLE, anyone?

  Alan> We _definately_ need this.  This would make help writing javascript in
  Alan> html, yacc, lex, web, and tons of other places.  If you figure out how
  Alan> to do this....

This has been more or less done already though not exactly as you would expect:
look for "indirect buffers" in Emacs 20.something and XEmacs 21.2

>From the XEmacs 21.2 NEWS file:

** You can now create "indirect buffers", like in GNU Emacs.  An
indirect buffer shares its text with another buffer ("base buffer"),
but has its own major mode, local variables, extents, and narrowing.
An indirect buffer has a name of its own, distinct from those of the
base buffer and all other buffers.  An indirect buffer cannot itself
be visiting a file (though its base buffer can be).  The base buffer
cannot itself be indirect.

Use (make-indirect-buffer BASE-BUFFER NAME) to make an indirect buffer
named NAME whose base is BASE-BUFFER.  If BASE-BUFFER is an indirect
buffer, its base buffer is used as the base for the new buffer.

You can make an indirect buffer current, or switch to it in a window,
just as you would a non-indirect buffer.

The function `buffer-base-buffer', given an indirect buffer, returns
its base buffer.  It returns nil when given an ordinary buffer (not
indirect).  `buffer-indirect-children' returns a list of the indirect
children of a base buffer.

Oscar