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

[Lars Ingebrigtsen]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

> We cannot just switch to variable-pitch font and leave the rest
> unchanged.  Using a variable-pitch font will cause an annoying
> horizontal movement of the mode-line stuff when some parts change.
> For example, moving in the buffer will change the column and line
> numbers, and everything to the right of that will as result shift
> slightly in the horizontal direction.

The line numbers aren't that big a problem -- the number of digits
rarely change, and all the numbers are the same size in most variable
pitch fonts that are in use for this stuff.

I don't use column number mode, but I switched it on now, and that seems
fine to me, too.

> So to use variable pitch fonts here (and in any other tabjlar
> display), we'd need to use 'align-to' display properties to keep the
> other parts from moving.

After playing with this stuff for half an hour, the only thing that
seemed vaguely disturbing was the U:** stuff at the start.  Adding an
align-to after that would get us most of the way there, I think.

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