Left-align org-mode like FoldingText... Regexp?

Question

I posted this question on stackoverflow earlier, but perhaps this is a better place for it?

I am looking for a way to left-align text in Org-mode so that the paragraphs line up like in FoldingText. Here is an example:

  * Headline number 1
 ** Headline number 2 [0/2]

    Here is some text
    before our first unordered list:

  - List item 1
  - List item 2

    And here is a checklist:

  - [ ] Do this first
  - [ ] Do this next

 ** Headline number 4

I've tried using align-regexp but I am having trouble figuring the correct regex string... any ideas?

Here's an update

I got this working with the following code:

(defun align-ft (p1 p2)
  "Align outlines like FoldingText"
  (interactive "r")
  (align-regexp p1 p2 "\\(^\\*+\\s-\\|^-\\s-\\|^\\)." -1 0 nil)
)

The only problem is that it aligns text by adding spaces, and I don't want spaces hard-coded into the document. I just want it to display, as if the spaces were there (like in org-indent-mode). Also, this code requires the region to be highlighted and ultimately, I just want it to auto-align the entire document, as I type.

Any ideas?

Answer 1

org-indent-mode adds the line-prefix and wrap-prefix special text properties. I'm not sure it's worth the hassle, but if you want to align your org buffer the desired way once, this may be for you:

(save-excursion
  (goto-char (point-min))
  (while (not (eobp))
    (let ((ind (make-string
                (- 4 (if (org-at-heading-p)
                         (org-current-level)
                       -1))
                ?\s)))
      (add-text-properties (point-at-bol) (point-at-eol)
                           `(line-prefix ,ind wrap-prefix ,ind)))
    (forward-line)))

Obviously you should deactivate org-indent-mode before.