bug#30016: Improve visibility of Process List

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Juri Linkov <juri@linkov.net>
> Date: Sun, 07 Jan 2018 23:54:17 +0200
> 
> 4. C-x C-c
>    “Active processes exist; kill them and exit anyway? (yes or no) ”
> 
> The displayed buffer *Process List* truncates the buffer names
> and thus hides the suffixes of the active buffers:
> 
> Shell           25550   run     *Async Shell... /dev/pts/17  /bin/bash -c 
> sleep 3600
> Shell<1>        25551   run     *Async Shell... /dev/pts/18  /bin/bash -c 
> sleep 3600
> Shell<2>        25552   run     *Async Shell... /dev/pts/19  /bin/bash -c 
> sleep 3600
> ...
> 
> These buffer name suffixes are important to see to be able
> to switch to the corresponding buffers using the *Buffer List*,
> check the output and terminate its process when needed.
> 
> So I propose to increase the size of the column for buffer names
> in *Process List* to at least fit the longest default buffer name
> *Async Shell Command* with suffixes:

Any hope of a more clever logic that would eliminate the need for
arbitrary limits?  Who can know whether there are other users of these
facilities which need even wider columns?  E.g., can we display
something like

   *Async Sh...<1>

i.e. make sure the numerical tail is shown?

> diff --git a/lisp/simple.el b/lisp/simple.el
> index 87e0b23..6e8930b 100644
> --- a/lisp/simple.el
> +++ b/lisp/simple.el
> @@ -3927,7 +3927,7 @@ process-menu-mode
>    (setq tabulated-list-format [("Process" 15 t)
>                              ("PID"      7 t)
>                              ("Status"   7 t)
> -                            ("Buffer"  15 t)
> +                            ("Buffer"  25 t)
>                              ("TTY"     12 t)
>                              ("Command"  0 t)])
>    (make-local-variable 'process-menu-query-only)

If we eventually decide to go with this simple change, there should be
a comment explaining the value and its use case, and perhaps also a
test for that.

Thanks.