Re: tabulated-list-init-header and glyphless-char-display

[Chong Yidong <cyd@stupidchicken.com>]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

> Then let's extend glyphless-char-display to provide this information.
> That is, for each character, it should provide display information
> both for GUI and for text-mode displays.  It can do that by providing
> an option to have an element of the char-table be a vector of 2
> elements, instead of just one value today.  Most table entries will
> still be symbols like today, but we could have some of them be
> vectors, as in this case and in the case of line-drawing characters.
>
> I think this is better than the text property suggestion, because
> glyphless-char-display can be set once and by default, whereas with
> text properties each Lisp application that needs it will have to do
> that manually.
>
> WDYT?

Instead of changing the meaning of glyphless-char-display, it might be
better to use a new char-table---say, fallback-display-table, by analogy
with buffer-display-table.

OTOH, it's also more complicated to implement than the text-property
idea; the mapping must be done somewhere in get_next_display_element,
just after we determine the font to use for a multibyte character,
compared to just adding a few lines to x_produce_glyphs.  But I agree
that it's probably a cleaner system.  I'll look into it.