Re: Better handling of window margins

[martin rudalics <rudalics@gmx.at>]

 > And how will this help in deciding how to split a window, when you
 > cannot predict how the margins will change (or _whether_ they will
 > change) as result of the split?

We never can predict such things.  For ‘linum-mode’ the display-width of
a window's margin will change when you show another buffer in that
window and that other buffer has 10000 lines and the buffer you showed
before has 5.

If ‘split-window’ is supposed to show the buffer of the original window,
the display-width of the margin is not supposed to change.  And that's
everything ‘split-window’ can care about.  If we are going to display
another buffer in the new window, all bets are off.

Years ago I proposed to introduce a function ‘make-window’ which would
accept as argument the buffer of the new window.  ‘make-window’ could
then have determined the minimum width of that window from buffer local
variables of the buffer to show there.  Nobody was interested.

Anyway.  Modes like ‘linum-mode’ which specify the display-width of the
margin in ‘post-command-hook’ could defeat any prediction unless they
provide a function that would allow ‘split-window’ to calculate the
expected display-width of the margin.

 > We are still talking about splitting windows here, right?

And about resizing windows, right?

 >> No.  I meant that enlarging a fringe by a few pixels or calling
 >> ‘adjust-window-trailing-edge’ should probably be allowed to reduce the
 >> margin-width for that window while preserving the display-width of its
 >> margins.  Currently these work by the simple magic that the text area is
 >> usually large enough so it can be shrunk when the window gets resized or
 >> its fringes enlarged.
 >
 > OK, but how does this lead to "modes will also have to intervene every
 > time we set a window's fringes" part?

Because the decision whether we can enlarge the fringes of a window is
also based on the size of the window's margins (see set_window_fringes).
So if a mode should be allowed to affect the behavior of ‘split-window’
based on how it wants its margins to behave in the old or new window, it
should be also allowed to affect the behavior of ‘set-window-fringes’,
for example, by reducing the margin-width when enlarging a fringe.

martin