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

[Lars Ingebrigtsen]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

> 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?

It wouldn't change how the file name is displayed at all -- it would
continue to be truncated by the window width (i.e., it "pokes out").

As the "formula" today is that the file name takes about half the window,
my proposed change would continue to keep that ratio (at least).  That
is, if you make the window 100 characters wide, the buffer name would
grow from 19 to...  (let's see)...  25-ish, and the file's visible area
would increase from 40-ish to 55-ish.

> 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.

That would also be nice, but I think kinda orthogonal to this issue?

-- 
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
   bloggy blog: http://lars.ingebrigtsen.no