Re: Window splitting issues with margins

[Joost Kremers <joostkremers@fastmail.fm>]

On Do, Nov 12 2015, martin rudalics <rudalics@gmx.at> wrote:
>  > I think it would make more sense to reduce the margin before reducing
>  > the text width.
>
> The margins you set above become a window property.  If after C-x 3 you
> do C-x 1 your are left with the reduced margins which might not be what
> you want.  Deciding when and how to auto-adjust margins is not trivial.
> I would do that in ‘visual-fill-column’.

Except that I don't know if any other package is also using the margin
and should perhaps assume a minimum width larger than 0. Right now,
visual-fill-column will happily set the margin to 0 if the window width
is smaller than the requested text width.

> I agree with this observation.  ‘window-splittable-p’ is asymmetric:
> When it checks the width, it uses the text area while for the height it
> uses the total area (inlcuding mode and header lines, scrollbar, divider
> ...).  If you want to change this, please provide a patch.  I certainly
> won't object it but am afraid that some people eventually will complain
> because one of their packages then doesn't work like it used to over the
> past decades ...

Well, I've been using a modified `window-splittable-p' in my init file
for quite some time and *I* don't have any complaints. ;-)

> The greatest problem I have with a function returning the combined size
> of text area and margins is that it would leave out the fringes.  Hence
> such a function would by default _not_ return the size of a contiguous
> area on the screen which I personally would find slightly disconcerting.

True. I hadn't thought about that.

> But if you send us such a function (say ‘window-text+margins-width’)
> and nobody objects I'll install it.

I might do that, but I will think a bit about what to do with the fringes.

-- 
Joost Kremers
Life has its moments