Re: There should be an option to set the display size of an image to zero

[Stefan Monnier]

> One possible idea -- not sure if it fits the purpose -- is to overlay
> transparent-background images on top of the displayed text, not unlike
> what we do with mouse pointers.

That's the idea, I think, yes.

Combined with posn-point which lets us find the XY coordinates of
a particular buffer position, it should be possible to build (in Elisp)
the right SVG image and tell Emacs to overlay it on top the text.

Ideally, the primitive could look like a `display' spec which says
"overlay the image at offset XY relative to the current position".
But if it's too difficult to handle it that way, a simpler (from the
C code PoV) approach might be a window property which says "overlay this
image over the whole window's text".


        Stefan