Re: Shouldn't emacs print long lists with newlines?

[Michael Heerdegen]

ndame <address@hidden> writes:

> E.g. if the disaplayed list is longer than a screen line then it could
> display an item per line. Maybe depending on a user option.

A good heuristic is not easy to find:

- When list elements are small (e.g. small integers), one item per line
is annoying because the list fills the whole screen although it would
fit in three lines or so.

- Code is sometimes pretty printed.  Adding newlines at bad places makes
the result look quite strange, e.g.

 (defun
  ()
  ...)

- What if the expression is deeply nested (like code) and subexpressions
already start near fill-column?

- Not everything that doesn't fit into one line is a list.  Should we
handle other objects too?

Michael.