It seems to me that lots of the const/mutable confusion in lyxtext comes from the fact that cursor movement methods are declared const but are not const at all, mostly because of the double space/double paragraph removal mechanism.
As a first step, I propose the removal of constness to all methods that are _not_ const, like cursorRight etc. They are not const below any point of view (they cause rebreaks, redraws, cursor movement, etc, so no 'stability' hipotesis can be made about them), and it's very confusing that they are declared const. I can make a patch for this if wanted. Thinking more about it, I think that the constantness of cursor movement is hardwired in my brain, and I find counterintuitive and even frustrating the present behaviour (Yes, I'm exagerating a little to obtain the desired effect ;). This leads my to my second proposal: What about removing the double space/par removal mechanism? Before you throw me something in the head, I have some proposals to replace it: Proposal 1) Plain forbid 3 spaces / 2 empty paragraphs (in order to discourage space/newline formatting abuse, do not load nor save double spaces, empty paragraphs). Proposal 2) Mark double/triple/... spaces and empty pars with some disgusting mark or colour, to encourage their removal. Can be combined with 1) Proposal 3) A space after a space is forbidden, a space before makes the cursor move to the right. Same for paragraphs: an enter after a newline forbidden, an enter before a newline goes down. Proposal 4) The same as 3) plus the following: with some kind of visual feedback (a somewhat different cursor maybe) the about-to-be-added space is remembered but not added yet. If the user types something, then it's added and the space is added after it. I think that 4) is my prefered option, because it keeps the same concrete behaviour than now. (but not the same visual) Ok, now you can throw me something in the head. Alfredo. PS: I think that the removal of the double space/empty par mechanism can lead to a _huge_ simplification in lyxtext code. PS2: another thing that I don't like is the fact that a bv is passed to almost all methods in lyxtext. As a lyxtext has one and only one bv, this is absurd. (apart from the fact that I think that the use of bv from lyxtext should be eliminated or kept to a minimum if possible)
