Re: What's the best server and how do you setup gnus in emacs?

[Emanuel Berg]

asjo@koldfront.dk (Adam Sjøgren) writes:

>>> The lack of a left margin does not seem to bother
>>> you, though?
>>
>> No, because that is a straight line so it is a clear
>> enough delimiter in itself.
>
> You were comparing to books - they have margins at
> both sides of the text - so that made me wonder...

Yes, I got you thinking.

Books have two margins, true. But the "outer" margin
(the one at the edge of the page, not the one where
both pages meet) is the one the widest. Either, it
actually is wider, or it gets wider by the binding.

I don't know why, but I consider a editor buffer to be
the right hand side of a book, if I had to pick one of
the two.

But the book comparison isn't the best come to think of
it. The reason is that books have their right (text)
margin straight as well. That makes the whitespace
margin less important as it is clear where the line is
anyway. If I could get that in Gnus, I could have it 70
as well (or perhaps 65, but then I have to solve that
other problem as well).

>>> Maybe using a proportional font might be of use to
>>> you, when width is constrained?
>>
>> What, you mean when "l"s are thin and "M" wide and
>> so on? Oh, no.
>
> Yes, like, you know, in books.

But not in programming or computer work. That would
bring chaos to everything. Just think of all
indentation. I could give you a thousand examples, but
let's say - this:

(let ((files (with-temp-buffer
               (call-process-shell-command
                "ls ~/.emacs.d/emacs-init/**/*.elc ~/.emacs-no-bc"
                nil ; no INFILE
                t)  ; BUFFER (t = current buffer, i.e. the temp one)
               (buffer-substring (point-min)
                                 (point-max)) )))
  (dolist (f (split-string files)) (load-file f)) )

How would that look? And how would it be carried out? I
don't know how auto-indentation would handle a
proportional font, only manually - which will always be
necessary if you want it a certain way, and with
functions (e.g., [1]), shortcuts, and finger habits
that's actually rather relaxing and pleasant work...

Also, isn't Usenet monospaced? If so, don't you want it
to look the same way in your client as other people
will see it - the actual text, at least?

> The conclusion is different strokes for different
> folks, I guess - just don't be surprised when people
> think your articles look strange, not using the
> recommended default line width.

Well, actually that would surprise me as the difference
shouldn't be that radical. It is just a line width
that's - let's see - 78.6% the default. Is that really
that radical? But I am used to see everything "my way"
as your posts are at 55 as well, when I read them. If
they weren't, and I read my own posts, perhaps I would
react to the difference (?).

By the way, I counted the chars in a newspaper which
had 4 columns a page - 32 chars! - for a randomly
picked line. I don't know what fill-column that would
be - 40? In "Black Belt", as I mentioned: 3 columns, 42
chars.

Is this easier to read? (It is a bit unscientific as
you had "training" reading it. Also, as said, I think
the professional newspapers guys and girls write in a
certain way to fit the form, probably short sentences
and paragraphs where the heavy information first, and
no complicated sentence structure (or parenthesis that
makes you loose track...) - uhm, what did I just say?
Oh, yeah, is this easier to read?

(setq fill-column 40)

By the way, I counted the chars in a
newspaper which had 4 columns a page -
32 chars! - for a randomly picked line.
I don't know what fill-column that would
be - 40? In "Black Belt", as I
mentioned: 3 columns, 42 chars.

[1] http://user.it.uu.se/~embe8573/conf/emacs-init/align.el

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underground experts united