Patch to improve org date manipulation

["T.V. Raman" <tv.raman.tv@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Bart,

first off, thanks for the patch.

I checked in a modification to emacspeak-org.el to create the
desired behavior -- code appended at the end.

Couple of comments on  your original patch.

1. Note that emacs provides built-in functions
line-beginning-position and line-end-position -- so you dont need
to do a save-excursion and move point to beginning of line, etc.


2. The idiom of turning a string into a list of chars, popping
off the front etc is very Pythonic and would perform well in
Python; it is not a good idiom to use in Lisp code, it would
perform badly.

 Moreover , it  wouldn't readily make sense to someone reading lisp code
(I had to read it twice to understand it):-)  This is more a
question of idioms and culture variations in different languages,
but is good to be aware of since it's the common idioms that are
also good with respect to performance. In lisp, if you turn a
string into a list of chars, you end up   creating new memory.

3. In this case, I went back and looked at the implementation in
org-mode for the functions being advised.

Reasoning: if that function  was
going to display that timestamp, and that was what we wanted to
speak, then it would be easier to find that string, rather than
doing a diff of the previous contents with the new contents.

This then took me to the function that computes the timestamp
string to display. I alsos noticed that not only does the
function computing the string to display return that string as
its return value, org actually caches it in a variable. If org
hadn't cached it, then I would have advised that function to
cache the variable in an emacspeak created variable -- a useful
trick to keep in mind.

4. But since org caches it in a named variable, I went ahead and
used it in the advice.

5. I also turned it into an after advice since it doesn't look
like we need the power of an around advice. So the explanation
turned out to be longer than the code;-)

`(defadvice ,f (after emacspeak pre act comp)
          "Provide auditory feedback."
          (when (ems-interactive-p )
            (emacspeak-auditory-icon 'select-object)
            (dtk-speak org-last-changed-timestamp)))
-- 

-- 

-- 

-- 


On 5/9/13, Bart Bunting <bart@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Good afternoon,
>
> Please find attached a small patch that modifies the way emacspeak
> speaks org dates when they are changed with s-up and s-down.
>
> Previously emacspeak would speak the entire line.  I found this a little
> verbose and wanted to hear just the relevant information.
>
> This patch attempts to address this by doing the following:
> - Compare the date before and after the change.
> - Find where the two strings differ.
> - Move point to the difference and then move back past any numbers.
> - Speak the line from this point.
>
>
> I welcome peoples thoughts on both the efficacy of this aproach and my
> coding style.
> .
> Kind regards
>
> Bart
>

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe from the emacspeak list or change your address on the
emacspeak list send mail to "emacspeak-request@xxxxxxxxxxx" with a
subject of "unsubscribe" or "help".