Emacs: Multiple files in one buffer?

[aluminumsulfate at earthlink.net]

> Cc: gnhlug-discuss at mail.gnhlug.org
> From: Bill McGonigle <bill at bfccomputing.com>
> Date: Thu, 8 Mar 2007 23:15:51 -0500

> On Mar 8, 2007, at 11:07, aluminumsulfate at earthlink.net wrote:
> 
> > I have a vague sort-of-almost memory of having read something about a
> > major mode which will let you edit multiple files in a single buffer.
> > I wondered how that could work, how emacs could know which part of the
> > buffer belonged to which file, but I didn't think it was useful
> > (indeed, I deemed it dangerous) at the time.
> 
> There's a major mode that lets you use multiple major modes in a  
> single buffer - could that be what you're thinking of?  mmm-mode,  
> IIRC.  I used to use it for embedding mason code in html.  I probably  

That's probably what I'm thinking of.  What I'd like to do is have
each function in a C source file appear in different subfiles. But I
want to be able to perform text operations over the whole bunch of
them... query-replace, isearch-forward, etc.

I don't think it would require any extra structure in the document.
Emacs supports some kind of text attributes which are just slightly
too mystical for my current understanding. They use these text
attributes to implement the forms package for fill-out forms (maybe
that's where I saw it?).  I could see giving a chunk of text in a
buffer a "source file" attribute containing the name of the file whose
contents that chunk of text represents.

/me goes poking in the forms package info manual... falls asleep.