Store the cursor position relative to surrounding text, make edits, then insert text at the stored location

Question

I have some insert functions that take some time (e.g., doing network IO). I like to store the current point position, and then insert the text at the stored point.

This should be robust to some small edits. I think bookmarks.el already has such a 'fuzzy' point storing machinery, but I am not sure if it's the best way to do this (or how to use bookmarks.el's presumably private API).

Answer 1

From your description, you don't want to return to a particular buffer position. You want to return to a particular text position, that is, a position in context, a position relative to the text surrounding the original position.

As @NickD suggested in a comment, what you want to do is to create and store a marker at the original location. Markers move along with the surrounding text.

(let ((opt  (point-marker)))
  ;; DO STUFF
  (goto-char opt))

Read about markers in the Elisp manual, node Markers.