Re: Buffers menu question

[Miles Bader <miles@gnu.org>]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:
>     Think about it:  your attempt to make a constant width field will
>     involve something like the characters `*', `%', and SPC, all of which
>     are different widths -- and you don't even know the widths (not that
>     would do you much good if you did).
> 
> Just because the solution is not certain to work does not mean it
> won't work well enough in practice.  In the past in some contexts I
> saw that many punctuation characters had the same width as space in
> many fonts.

Perhaps that's true, but of course they should probably also be
characters that convey the desired meaning to users.  In the case of
buffer status, the conventional characters are `*' and `%', which in
the font I used for menus are radically different widths (that's why I
sound so adamant -- it really does look bad for me).  [A quick check
shows the same is true for the default menu font.]

-Miles
-- 
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