Re: Emacs26: Quick thoughts on display-line-numbers-mode

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> From: Robert Weiner <rsw@gnu.org>
> Date: Thu, 5 Oct 2017 15:44:54 -0400
> Cc: emacs-devel <emacs-devel@gnu.org>
> 
>  ​​Separation between the numbers and the text is still kept, by means of
>  ​​a white-space glyph.
> 
> ​So could you add a customization option for this glyph that would provide some visual separation, e.g. a
> hairline or something similar to the visual linum-mode provides?

There's a technical problem with doing that, for which I didn't have a
solution at the time and still don't.  Such an option would also slow
redisplay, albeit in minor ways.

>  ​​> 2. The mode-line popup menu that displays/hides line and col numbers in the mode=line could be
>  expanded to
>  ​​> toggle this mode on and off locally and globally, as well as providing options for its various display
>  settings:
>  ​​> relative, visual and absolute.
>  ​​
>  ​​I'm not sure I agree. The mode-line menu is for displays on the mode
>  ​​line. The display-line-numbers-mode and its variants can be turned on
>  ​​or off from the menu bar's Options menu.
> 
> ​I see your point but do think in practice a lot of people would look to the mode-line menu if they could. Also,
> having all the options in one place would let people decide which to use at any given point without hunting
> around. I know I look at mode-lines a lot more than the menubar.

Well, currently the mode line offers customization only of the stuff
that is displayed on the mode line, so I'm not sure why people would
look there or something else.

> It would also force a cleanup of the menu item
> naming so that it was obvious where each option will display its numbers.

Not sure I understand: the Options menu has Hide/Show sub-menu, which
is where we put all the toggle-type options.  Line-number display is
one of them.  So it looks like the current arrangement is consistent
with how we provide similar customizations.