Re: .emacs to keep cursor stationary when scrolling with mouse

[JohnF]

tomas@tuxteam.de wrote:
> On Sat, May 30, 2015 at 07:48:34AM +0000, JohnF wrote:
>> tomas@tuxteam.de wrote:
> [...]
>> > Just one remark, perhaps to ease communication. When you say "stay fixed",
>> > you mean *relative to the window* and not *relative to the buffer* (in
>> > other words, to the underlying text), right?
>> 
>> Right. When scrolling text with keyboard page up/down. And that works now.
> [...]
> 
>> > It took me a while to realize that [...]
>> > Seen from that perspective, you want to "move" point along with "window",
> [...]
> 
>> Maybe, maybe not -- what's a "window"??? I meant the physical screen
>> real estate, what emacs maybe calls the "frame", as in, e.g.,
>>   (set-frame-width (selected-frame) 80)        ; #cols wide
>>   (set-frame-height (selected-frame) 52)       ; #rows high
> 
> "Window" in Emacs terminology: the pane you are looking through to see
> the content of the buffer. A "frame" can contain several windows.

Right... when I press  C-x 2  the 80x52 frame remains the same size,
but now contains two smaller windows. Thanks for the additional
terminology correction. Maybe I should google an "emacs glossary" page :)

> Concerning
> your wish, it doesn't make much difference, because the relations between
> window and frame don't change while scrolling (I'd hope ;-)
> 
>> Relative to that, I want the point stationary when text scrolls.
>> Now, if you mean the "window of the text buffer" displayed in
>> the frame, which changes as text scrolls, then I guess I could agree
>> that the point "moves" relative to that. But it seems an odd way
>> to phrase things...
> 
> Yes, that's why I pointed it out as soon as I noticed. I don't have
> a direct solution to your problem (but there's another answer which
> looks good), but I thought I could help bridging the sematic gap.

Yes, thanks, and as replied to Damien, his solution indeed works great!

>> ...Maybe that's just the "mental model" you mentioned above,
>> for emacs relative to people (me) accustomed to other editors.
>> An anthropologist could maybe have a good time with that.
>> How does
>>   "Ethnocentrism as exhibited by different editor communities"
>> sound as the title for an article submitted to the American Journal
>> of Anthropology (or wherever)? :)
> 
> :-)
> 
> But actually, this is one of the difficulties in getting up to speed with
> Emacs: it's a toolset with a long history, and thus with a rich and
> deeply ingrained culture which, to beginners poses a hurdle. Sometimes
> things "you know" are called in strange ways, sometimes "you do" things
> differently. Of course, you can customize (nearly) everything to your
> liking, but sometimes it's difficult to express what you want in a
> way that the Emacs tribe understands it.
> Regards
> tom?s

I've found the culture/tribe very helpful, indeed (to wit, this thread).
I was basically just looking for an .emacs that turns it into a
dumb editor: no syntax highlighting, no smart tabs, no blinking
on matching (),{},etc, no nothing. But such an .emacs turned out harder
than I'd have thought. Took me lots of googling, which turned up some
half-dumb-but-not-dumb-enough .emacs, and then lots of questions
to get to the dumb-enough stage. The .emacs I posted at the top
of this thread was the end result of that. And I think Damien's
additional suggestion above now completes the job.
Thanks again, guys,
-- 
John Forkosh  ( mailto:  j@f.com  where j=john and f=forkosh )