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

[Stefan Monnier]

>> > Yes, this can be done.  But we'd need fort to decide what is the
>> > semantics of this:
>> >   (setq mode-line-thing `(:propertize "%12b" :min-width 10))
>> One solution is to not use text-properties, e.g.
> That's what I suggested: to use the "12" part for that.

That would limit its applicability to to the few % escape sequences
(and would make it more difficult to provide things like centering,
min-width, max-width, ...).

>> The downside is that this will only work for <foo>-line-format, whereas
>> this kind of functionality would also be handy within buffer text for
>> tabular modes like `proced`.
> Outside of the mode line, I don't know how to implement that easily,
> because that would need some kind of looking-back to find where the
> text property started.

Indeed.  Maybe the text-property's value should include the information
of what is the "starting position".


        Stefan