On Fri, 03 Jul 2026 00:55:34 +0100, Daniel Cerqueira wrote:

M-q is the 'fill-paragraph' function.

And a very versatile one it is, too. It copes with indented text,
preserves quoting or comment prefixes, and also helpfully removes
redundant spaces. ;)

Lawrence D?Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:

On Fri, 03 Jul 2026 00:55:34 +0100, Daniel Cerqueira wrote:

M-q is the 'fill-paragraph' function.

I use this a lot :)

And a very versatile one it is, too. It copes with indented text,
preserves quoting or comment prefixes, and also helpfully removes
redundant spaces. ;)

A little warning about M-q. In GNU Emacs 30+, the scratch
buffer's M-q is redefined to something else. If you want
to use 'fill-paragraph' in the scratch buffer you may
need to add these to ~/.emacs:

;; Map M-q in *scratch* buffer
(add-hook 'lisp-interaction-mode-hook
(lambda ()
(local-set-key (kbd "M-q") 'fill-paragraph)))

FWIW, I tend to use 'fill-paragraph' a lot in scratch.
--
[t]csh(1) - "An elegant shell, for a more... civilized age."
- Paraphrasing Star Wars

On Fri, 3 Jul 2026 01:32:46 -0000 (UTC), John McCue wrote:

A little warning about M-q. In GNU Emacs 30+, the scratch buffer's
M-q is redefined to something else.

I didn’t notice this (running Emacs 30.2, since that’s what was in
Debian Unstable on my last upgrade), because I run with Emacs’ entire
mode system disabled.

FWIW, I tend to use 'fill-paragraph' a lot in scratch.

So do I.

Oh, and I also added a buffer-protection mechanism, because I have a
shortcut (super-W) for closing the current buffer, and I was losing
the scratch buffer too often from this. ;)

On 2026-07-03, Lawrence D’Oliveiro wrote:

On Fri, 3 Jul 2026 01:32:46 -0000 (UTC), John McCue wrote:

A little warning about M-q. In GNU Emacs 30+, the scratch buffer's
M-q is redefined to something else.

I didn’t notice this (running Emacs 30.2, since that’s what was in
Debian Unstable on my last upgrade), because I run with Emacs’ entire
mode system disabled.

FWIW, I tend to use 'fill-paragraph' a lot in scratch.

So do I.

Oh, and I also added a buffer-protection mechanism, because I have a
shortcut (super-W) for closing the current buffer, and I was losing
the scratch buffer too often from this. ;)

After spending way too long dealing with the consequences of *scratch*
not being backed up, I went with this:

(setq initial-buffer-choice "/home/[...]/scratch.org")

The point being that I use the initial buffer more for quick
note-keeping that ought to be transitory until saved in a more
appropriate fashion, but I kept getting bitten by bugs of the following
species - not saying it happened often enough, but still it happening
once an year or so would pose an issue:

* Drosophila Segmentationum Faltum

* Aedes Blackoutitis


Now more seriously, the point here is that, if that buffer is backed by
a file, it does get auto-saved and can be restored to at least a
somewhat recent copy in case of an improper Emacs shutdown.

If you rely on it for Elisp interaction, I suppose you could as well as
make it an Elisp file. I have the following, but I'm not sure the mode
still needs to be set after the buffer is set to open a file matching
.*\.org:

(setq initial-major-mode 'org-mode [...] )

Now I'm not sure this matters at all with a shortcut to close the buffer
- but I suppose that, if it's a buffer with a file, it may prompt you
before killing it? (It'd otherwise not protect as much as your
protection, I guess, because there'd still be a gap between the last
auto-save and it being killed?)

(Meanwhile, I set Emacs on Android the same way, so I can start typing
notes in the buffer it opens when it starts, and just do C-x C-s,
without having to open a file first.)
--
Nuno Silva

On 2026-07-03 08:57, Nuno Silva wrote:

[...]

The point being that I use the initial buffer more for quick
note-keeping that ought to be transitory until saved in a more
appropriate fashion, but I kept getting bitten by bugs of the following species - not saying it happened often enough, but still it happening
once an year or so would pose an issue:

* Drosophila Segmentationum Faltum

* Aedes Blackoutitis

A vimcination with linucillin is known to help against all that.

Now more seriously, [...]

Nah!

Janis :-)