Question

Since I would like to use a font that does not align well when using align functions, I figured that I could alter the font type prior to aligning the text.

So, I do not want to change what happens to text that is selected, but I want to edit selected text to alter the font at that time, allowing to use align.

(defun set-font-and-align () 
  (change font type of the selected text)
  (align-regexp)
)

Any ideas?

Answer 1

After some work, this is what I came up with:

(overlay-put (make-overlay (region-beginning) (region-end)) 'face '(:family "Monospace"))

This changes the font of the text in the region to Monospace. Similarly, it is possible to add :bold among other things.

Here is it in action: I use it for marking the paragraph, followed by assigning a monospace font, and then aligning on both & and \\.

(defun align-test ()
  (interactive)
  (mark-paragraph)
  (overlay-put (make-overlay (region-beginning)  (region-end)) 'face '(:family "Monospace"))

 (if (eq major-mode 'latex-mode)
    (progn   (align-regexp (region-beginning) (region-end)  "\\(\\s-*\\)&" 1 1 t )
         (align-regexp (region-beginning) (region-end)  "\\(\\s-*\\)\\\\\\\\" 1 1 t )))
  )