Gödel, Escher, Bach

I'm a Yegge fan-boy, and his most recent post mentioned Gödel, Escher, Bach - the Pulitzer Prize-winning book by Douglas Hofstadter. Which got me to thinking...

A couple of programmers/bloggers I respect have the book on their must-have lists: Joel, Stevey. And most programming bloggers refer to it reverently.

I tried to read the book shortly after graduating college. I didn't finish it, because it was incredibly boring and repetitive and boring ... and repetitive. Turns out many don't finish the book, no surprise to me.

I'll repeat myself (in the spirit of GEB I should probably recurse), GEB was a complete snoozer. It reminded me much of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged - another snoozer. There's only so much repetition I can stand.

I'm sure I missed all the puzzles and word-play - I certainly didn't get to the end where Hofstadter's characters discuss books that end before the final page (a joke that took 700 pages to set up).

Perhaps the book provides a path to enlightenment to people who are not familiar with recursion, self-reference, and the incompleteness theorem. Or, maybe there is enough wordplay and "charming" dialog to get you to wade through all 800 pages (there is that one nearly at the end).

I'd have been happier if the book were condensed to 150 pages.

Emacs Tip #26: CUA mode (specifically rectangle editing)

I'd heard of CUA mode, but generally dismiss it because I don't want the "windows" bindings for cut/copy/paste/undo. But when I saw this video of CUA's rectangle support, I knew this was the way to edit rectangles.


Emacs Column Editing from Mark Mansour on Vimeo.

To activate in emacs 22.1 - with minimal intrusion (I don't like transient mark mode):
(setq cua-enable-cua-keys nil)
(setq cua-highlight-region-shift-only t) ;; no transient mark mode
(setq cua-toggle-set-mark nil) ;; original set-mark behavior, i.e. no transient-mark-mode
(cua-mode)

The *info* page doesn't have the rectangle bindings (as far as I can see), so here is the documentation from the code:

;; CUA rectangle support
;; ---------------------
;; Emacs' normal rectangle support is based on interpreting the region
;; between the mark and point as a "virtual rectangle", and using a
;; completely separate set of "rectangle commands" [C-x r ...] on the
;; region to copy, kill, fill a.s.o. the virtual rectangle.
;;
;; cua-mode's superior rectangle support uses a true visual
;; representation of the selected rectangle, i.e. it highlights the
;; actual part of the buffer that is currently selected as part of the
;; rectangle.  Unlike emacs' traditional rectangle commands, the
;; selected rectangle always as straight left and right edges, even
;; when those are in the middle of a TAB character or beyond the end
;; of the current line.  And it does this without actually modifying
;; the buffer contents (it uses display overlays to visualize the
;; virtual dimensions of the rectangle).
;;
;; This means that cua-mode's rectangles are not limited to the actual
;; contents of the buffer, so if the cursor is currently at the end of a
;; short line, you can still extend the rectangle to include more columns
;; of longer lines in the same rectangle.  And you can also have the
;; left edge of a rectangle start in the middle of a TAB character.
;; Sounds strange? Try it!
;;
;; To start a rectangle, use [C-return] and extend it using the normal
;; movement keys (up, down, left, right, home, end, C-home,
;; C-end). Once the rectangle has the desired size, you can cut or
;; copy it using C-x and C-c (or C-w and M-w), and you can
;; subsequently insert it - as a rectangle - using C-v (or C-y).  So
;; the only new command you need to know to work with cua-mode
;; rectangles is C-return!
;;
;; Normally, when you paste a rectangle using C-v (C-y), each line of
;; the rectangle is inserted into the existing lines in the buffer.
;; If overwrite-mode is active when you paste a rectangle, it is
;; inserted as normal (multi-line) text.
;;
;; If you prefer the traditional rectangle marking (i.e. don't want
;; straight edges), [M-p] toggles this for the current rectangle,
;; or you can customize cua-virtual-rectangle-edges.

;; And there's more: If you want to extend or reduce the size of the
;; rectangle in one of the other corners of the rectangle, just use
;; [return] to move the cursor to the "next" corner.  Or you can use
;; the [M-up], [M-down], [M-left], and [M-right] keys to move the
;; entire rectangle overlay (but not the contents) in the given
;; direction.
;;
;; [C-return] cancels the rectangle
;; [C-space] activates the region bounded by the rectangle

;; If you type a normal (self-inserting) character when the rectangle is
;; active, the character is inserted on the "current side" of every line
;; of the rectangle.  The "current side" is the side on which the cursor
;; is currently located. If the rectangle is only 1 column wide,
;; insertion will be performed to the left when the cursor is at the
;; bottom of the rectangle.  So, for example, to comment out an entire
;; paragraph like this one, just place the cursor on the first character
;; of the first line, and enter the following:
;;     C-return M-} ; ;   C-return

;; cua-mode's rectangle support also includes all the normal rectangle
;; functions with easy access:
;;
;; [M-a] aligns all words at the left edge of the rectangle
;; [M-b] fills the rectangle with blanks (tabs and spaces)
;; [M-c] closes the rectangle by removing all blanks at the left edge
;;       of the rectangle
;; [M-f] fills the rectangle with a single character (prompt)
;; [M-i] increases the first number found on each line of the rectangle
;;       by the amount given by the numeric prefix argument (default 1)
;;       It recognizes 0x... as hexadecimal numbers
;; [M-k] kills the rectangle as normal multi-line text (for paste)
;; [M-l] downcases the rectangle
;; [M-m] copies the rectangle as normal multi-line text (for paste)
;; [M-n] fills each line of the rectangle with increasing numbers using
;;       a supplied format string (prompt)
;; [M-o] opens the rectangle by moving the highlighted text to the
;;       right of the rectangle and filling the rectangle with blanks.
;; [M-p] toggles virtual straight rectangle edges
;; [M-P] inserts tabs and spaces (padding) to make real straight edges
;; [M-q] performs text filling on the rectangle
;; [M-r] replaces REGEXP (prompt) by STRING (prompt) in rectangle
;; [M-R] reverse the lines in the rectangle
;; [M-s] fills each line of the rectangle with the same STRING (prompt)
;; [M-t] performs text fill of the rectangle with TEXT (prompt)
;; [M-u] upcases the rectangle
;; [M-|] runs shell command on rectangle
;; [M-'] restricts rectangle to lines with CHAR (prompt) at left column
;; [M-/] restricts rectangle to lines matching REGEXP (prompt)
;; [C-?] Shows a brief list of the above commands.

;; [M-C-up] and [M-C-down] scrolls the lines INSIDE the rectangle up
;; and down; lines scrolled outside the top or bottom of the rectangle
;; are lost, but can be recovered using [C-z].