Re: fringe buffer-boundary bitmaps

[Kim F. Storm]

"Richard M. Stallman" <address@hidden> writes:

>     I understand that, but I don't see why we need two different ways to
>     modify them -- you can redefine the standard bitmap directly, so I
>     don't see why do we need an extra level of indirection here (which has
>     to be done at the C level to an already quite complex piece of code).
>
>     Currently, what we have are standard bitmaps for "bob-left",
>     "bob-right", "eob-left", "eob-right" etc...
>
>     But, rather than following the existing pattern of naming them after
>     their purpose (like "continuation-line", "left-truncation" etc), I
>     have named them after their visual appearence, e.g. "top-left-angle",
>     "top-right-angle", "bottom-left-angle", etc...
>
>     That is a bug IMO, so I agree with Miles that those names should be
>     changed to match their purpose rather their appearence.
>
> I would not say we "need" the extra level--that word is too
> strong--but I think it would be cleaner.
>
> It would be cleaner to name each bitmap after what it looks like, such
> as top-left-angle, then specify by name one of these bitmaps to use
> for a given purpose, such as beginning-of-buffer.
>
> It's like defining a function with your own choice of name and then
> putting that name in a hook or variable with a standard fixed name,
> instead of redefining a function with a fixed name.

I have finally found some time to work on this item in FOR-RELEASE.

I have installed some changes to implement it, along with changes to
the lispref and NEWS.  New buffer-local variables are
fringe-indicator-alist and fringe-cursor-alist.

Note that fringe.el is now pre-loaded, so I might have broken
something related to the way fringe-mode is handled, or the
involved code can be simplified.

Please take a look.

-- 
Kim F. Storm <address@hidden> http://www.cua.dk