bug#16828: 24.3.50; eval-expression, character representation of integer results time-consuming

[Stephen Berman]

On Sat, 22 Feb 2014 15:11:05 +0200 Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> wrote:

>> Date: Sat, 22 Feb 2014 13:49:24 +0100
>> From: Anders Lindgren <andlind@gmail.com>
>> Cc: "16828@debbugs.gnu.org" <16828@debbugs.gnu.org>
>> 
>> Personally, I see little value of always seeing the char representation of
>> integers >255, and if that comes at the cost of a 22 second delay I don't
>> see that it's worth it.
>
> A user option should be a good compromise (we could argue about its
> default value later ;-).

An option for whether to show the character representation of integers
higher than 255 may be the easiest way to deal with this issue, but the
problem has wider scope (at least for me): it happens with any command
that makes Emacs look for and load a suitable font, e.g. `C-h h' or
opening an email or newsgroup posting that contains such a character.
In my case the delay can be as long as ~90 (ninety!) seconds.  Even
though this happens only once per session, such a long delay, during
which Emacs is effectively frozen, is quite annoying, especially when
reading mail or news, where it is typically unexpected.  Could the
option be a timeout, say if the font isn't found within X seconds (with
a low default), then just some placeholder will be shown, and maybe a
message indicating the failure to find the font in that time?

Steve Berman