bug#30692: list-buffers has hardwired 80 character width from the 80's

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Lars Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org>
> Date: Fri, 07 Aug 2020 11:03:43 +0200
> Cc: 30692@debbugs.gnu.org
> 
> Lars Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org> writes:
> 
> >> The problem is the Buffer column.
> >
> > [...]
> >
> >> The trouble really starts when one has lots of
> >>     *sent mail to dd...     219 Message          ~/News/drafts/drafts/51
> >>     *sent mail to da...     329 Message          ~/News/drafts/drafts/52
> >>     *sent wide reply...    1024 Message          ~/News/drafts/drafts/53
> >>
> >> indeed one cannot even see one letter of who the last one was sent to.
> >
> > Ah, I see.  Yes, that's pretty annoying.  It should expand the buffer
> > column size based on the window width.
> 
> To recap: Even when the window is very wide, `C-x b' renders with
> 
> Buffer-menu-name-width 19
> 
> I propose to allow nil as a value here (and default Emacs to it), and
> nil would then mean "compute based on window width".  The computation
> would end up with 19 as the result if the window is 80 characters long,
> but progressively make it longer if the window is wider (according to
> some curve), but never make it longer than actual buffer names displayed.

I don't understand the plan, sorry.  Buffer-menu has 2 potentially
long parts: the buffer name and the file name.  I don't understand the
details of your proposal, and thus cannot figure out what will happen
when displaying the full buffer name and the full file name exceeds
the window-width.

Can you describe the proposal in more detail?

In general, I'd say that we should be smarter about how we produce the
shortened versions of these long names, because I think otherwise
whatever we do there will be a scenario where the important part(s)
are hidden.  Which really is the single interesting part of this bug
report, if you ignore the "from the 80's" part, which is just a
teaser.