Re: Side Windows

[martin rudalics <rudalics@gmx.at>]

 > A question: would it make sense to invert the meaning of the 'slot'
 > parameter when the main window shows a buffer whose
 > bidi-paragraph-direction is right-to-left?  The idea is that when the
 > main window shows R2L text, the entire geometry of the window
 > arrangement should switch direction, at least optionally, otherwise
 > applications that want that will have to include tedious code to
 > recompute the slots on the fly.

Suppose the main window shows a left-to-right buffer and we have two
bottom side windows.  Switching to a right-to-left buffer in the main
window would now mean to exchange the buffers shown in the side windows.
We would also have to renumber these windows, resize them maybe,
exchange their parameters and some of those properties stored in window
configurations.  And we would have to adjust all overlays with a
`window' property in those windows.  It's certainly possible to do all
that but it's not entirely trivial.

Personally, I think that such layout decisions should be made before the
first side window is created.  I doubt that you change the menubar
layout whenever you switch `bidi-paragraph-direction'.  So some variable
‘bidi-default-direction’ would be much simpler to handle (with the
obvious deficiency that you can't change the layout on-the-fly when you
set that variable).  But in practice I never work with bidirectional
text so I can't really tell.

martin