Re[1]: modal proportionality, redux

[Eric M. Ludlam]

>>> Miles Bader <address@hidden> seems to think that:
>"Eric M. Ludlam" <address@hidden> writes:
>> If the greatest complaint about using other fonts is *, %, and -, why
>> not create some B&W images that mean what those characters represent,
>> like a little lock, pencil
>> look nice.  This would be consistent with those other modern editors
>> I'm forced to use at work.
>
>The main problem with embedded images is that they're inflexible -- if
>the user's font (size) is significantly different from that envisioned
>by the creator of the images, things look like crap.
>[This, incidentally, is the same problem with mixing in asterisks from
>another font; such mixtures tend to be very brittle, and prone to
>getting screwed up by environmental changes.]
>
>That said, I agree that the Gnus Gnu looks cool, and it would be nice to
>at least offer the option of little icons instead of cryptic characters
>(and perhaps the wish for a different sort of asterisk might be provided
>for using the same mechanism).
  [ ... ]

Perhaps some additional image properties would help.  I tried to
create images for use in speedbar which suffer the same problem you
describe, where changes in the font size make things look silly.  The
following types of image display properties would help both your
complaints, speedbar, and anyone else who want to use images as font
matching glyphs:

1) :minimumfontsize <size> :maximumfontsize <size2>
   - Only use the previously specified  image if the default fontsize
     of the text it is obscuring is SIZE or larger, or SIZE2 and smaller.
     A series of image file names and :minimumfontsize specifiers
     would provide a series of images to use for different sizes.

2) :stretch <some symbol or other>
   - Let the image data be stretched based on some algorithm or
     other.   Perhaps this is just a boolean.

3) Vector images
   - This would be like vector fonts.  I've created nifty stretchy
     images in metafont that worked quite nicely for me, though it is
     not a trivial mechanism.

And while I'm here looking at my *mail* buffer and inventing things
for others to do, perhaps "Mail" major-mode string could be an open
envelope. ;)

Eric