M-; : comment-column gets overridden by fill-column. Is this the Right Thing?

[Alan Mackenzie <acm@muc.de>]

Hi, Emacs,

In a recent request for help from Michael Massmann on gnu.emacs.help,
he wants comments to be at column 100, but was unable to make M-; do
this.

He'd set comment column to 100, and had tried playing around with the
comment configuration in CC Mode, all to no avail.

M-; invokes comment-dwim calls comment-indent, which starts by putting
an empty comment at col 100.  It's not finished, though.

comment-indent then calls comment-choose-indent, which returns 72.
comment-indent then repositions the empty comment to col 72.  :-(

comment-choose-indent (which might better be called
comment-chews-indent ;-) makes the comment fit inside fill-column,
despite the fact that auto-fill-mode isn't enabled.  This is surely not
the right thing.  Should c-c-indent use fill-column when auto-fill-mode
is enabled?

Surely the documentation for M-; should mention fill-column?

Why is this comment stuff in such a mess?

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).