Re: Custom vtable.el sorters

[Kristoffer Balintona]

On Thu, Oct 03 2024, Adam Porter wrote:

> Hi Kristoffer,
>
>> I recently discovered the wonderful vtable.el built-in package. As far
>> as I can tell, vtable is meant to eventually be a drop-in replacement
>> for tabulated-list-mode (despite (elisp) Tabulated List Mode mentioning
>> that vtable is geared toward variable pitch fonts, whereas
>> tabulated-list mode is for monospace fonts) -- please correct me if I am
>> wrong.
>>
>> In any case, I noticed that in vtable.el, vtable--sort (which appears to
>> be where column sorting is implemented) has hard-coded behavior for
>> sorting, namely, simple numerical and string sorters. I would like to
>> ask about whether there any plans to add the ability for users to set
>> custom sorters for their columns. Tabulated-list-mode has a version of
>> this by setting tabulated-list-format: every column can use its own
>> sorter.
>
> I can't find any bug reports mentioning "vtable sort", so I guess there
> are no such plans yet.  The Vtable manual indeed says that only
> numerical and string sorting is done, depending on the type of value
> returned by the getter function.  But it seems like a reasonable idea to
> me, to allow custom sort functions.  So, patches welcome, I guess.  :)

I see. I could definitely try my hand at implementing such a feature.
However, I'm very new to the Emacs development process and have never
contributed to Emacs before. (I am aware of the FSF copyright assignment
process though.) Would I just attach a patch to an email sent to
emacs-devel@gnu.org and wait for some input?

Although I haven't tried yet, another concern of mine is that whatever
implementation I think up wouldn't be that great--I can't help but feel
like someone more qualified should do the job of writing the code for
what could be a widely used feature in the future.

I apologize if these questions are naive. I thought it'd be better to
ask anyway.

-- 
With appreciation,
Kristoffer