Re: [ELPA] New package: marginalia

[Juri Linkov <juri@linkov.net>]

>> What about adding the extended `symbol-class` function from Marginalia
>> directly to help-fns.el? Note that the Marginalia function returns
>> multiple characters "fv" if a symbol denotes both a function and a variable.
>>
>> Do you want to keep the `symbol-class` to be a single character under
>> all circumstances?
>
> I have tried to use marginalia--symbol-class for help--symbol-class,
> and noticed a few problems:
>
> 1. It's hard to visually scan the column with types
>    when the primary char (f, c, v, u) is not the first in the row.
>    In the following patch I moved the primary char to the beginning.
>
> 2. Also it would help to see the letter of the primary char
>    if secondary chars are not letters.  So I replaced "o" (obsolete)
>    with a strikethrough symbol "-".
>
> 3. Are Unicode characters allowed?  Then could we add to the primary char
>    e.g. COMBINING LONG STROKE OVERLAY (U+0336) to designate obsolete.
>
> 4. The remaining secondary letter is "l" for local, but I can't find
>    a non-letter character to replace it.

A good character would be a prime like in derivatives, e.g. v' and u'.
I guess this is ok, so pushed to master.  Please respond if you disagree.

> 5. Isn't using formatting such as "%-6s" not suitable in the backend?
>    At least, I moved it out of help--symbol-class.  Ideally,
>    the frontend should adjust column sizes to fit them to the longest value.
>
> 6. The format "%-6s " with 7 placeholders that is too wide for most symbols
>    when a tiny fraction of symbols has 4 chars max, so reduced it to 4: