Re: Customize fringe

[Miles Bader]

Simon Josefsson <address@hidden> writes:
> > My point was that, unlike menus or toolbars, people will _usually_ want to
> > do something besides turning fringes entirely on or off (presuming they
> > want to do anything at all), and that as a result, having `fringe-mode' +
> > adjustments is the wrong user-interface to this functionality.
> 
> Ok.  I based the design from what I wanted out of it.  If other people
> want to do more fine tuned things, I guess it is easy to add.

Let me be more explicit:  We _shouldn't_ adopt `fringe-mode' and then
`add' to it -- we should just call it something else.

The basic name of a feature has a strong influence on how people think of
it, even if it's possible to change the details on the side.  In this case
the name `fringe-mode' suggests (by example, from many other emacs
commands) that the `basic functionality' is to have fringes either (1) on
or (2) off.  If people see this, and are annoyed by the default fringes,
they're going to thing `oh, that's how I deal with those address@hidden 
fringes,'
invoke it, and (95% of the time) leave it at that, ending up with no
fringes -- and that's undesirable, since other configurations also save
space without incurring the rather high penalty in usability that no
fringes does.

Here's a suggestion for what I think is a better interface:

Call it `reduced-fringe-mode', and have it switch between full fringes
and, say, right-fringe-only.  People who _really_ want to have no fringes
at all can customize an associated configuration variable and choose that
possiblity as the `reduced' state, and it will still make sense.  It could
also allow a C-u prefix to select an alternative configuration, or prompt
for the configuration, or whatever.

> > it's common for people to want to simply turn scrollbars on or off, but
> > the scrollbar location is merely a detail.
> 
> I disagree -- I rather disable the scrollbar than to have on the left.
> The location is not a detail.

That's what I said -- `people to want to simply turn scrollbars on or
off.'  Here `detail' implies a secondary characteristic, of less
importantance that the main `boolean' behavior (and obviously for you, of
_zero_ importance).

> Compare with scroll-bar-mode and menu-bar-mode, is it really that
> different?

Yes, because simply eliminating fringes is more harmful than removing the
scroll-bar or menu-bar (which have good alternatives), so we want to
gently encourage people to do something less drastic -- and I think people
would generally be happy with a `reduced' option.  I suspect that the main
thing that makes people dislike fringes is that a whole column for each
side seems like a lot of wasted space, especially for the left side (where
it's much more obvious than the right-side because all the text abuts it).

> I want on/off, you suggested half/half and left only and right only.
> Are there more?

I don't think it really matters for this purpose; if any are found, they
can easily be added later.

I think enhancing the display code so that it tries to use alternative
bitmaps for `reduced' fringes would make them much more useful --
e.g. a 4/4 split or 2/6 split might be perfect if they had bitmaps
tuned for them.

-Miles
-- 
97% of everything is grunge