Re: How to make Emacs popular again: Use monospaced fonts less

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Lars Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org>
> Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org
> Date: Tue, 13 Oct 2020 02:38:03 +0200
> 
> >>         (setq mode-line-thing
> >>               `(:propertize
> >>                 "some-string"
> >>                 :min-width 15))
> >> 
> >> which could have well-defined semantics, like "this element should have
> >> the width of at least 15 typical characters", and be pretty easy to use?
> >
> > This stuff is basically unworkable without having a window in whose
> > context the string will be shown.  That's because we need metrics of
> > each character glyph, and that presumes fonts, and that presumes faces
> > and other stuff.
> >
> > This is why we use 'display' property: when the text is displayed, we
> > have this data by definition.  But not when we just have a string.
> 
> I'm not sure I understand you.  The mode line elements are only used
> when we display them, so we know all that stuff, and can apply some
> padding after the element if we have a :min-width thing here.

Then perhaps I didn't understand your suggestion: how would the above
be different from what you originally had in mind about :min-width?