Splash screen alignment on wider frame layout

Splash screen alignment on wider frame layout

[Pankaj Jangid]

Recently I have been experimenting with the width of my Emacs frame
using some code in the early-init.el file. This was inspired by the text
user interface (TUI )of one of my Debian laptops, that doesn't have a
graphical user interface. I wanted exactly same number of columns and
rows on my graphical as well as text user interfaces. This is what I
did,

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
(setq default-frame-alist
      '((height . 47) (width . 169) (left . 110)))
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

During this exercise, I found a tiny issue with the alignment of text
and Emacs logo in the welcome screen, *GNU Emacs* buffer (splash). I
think this can be improved.

I like the left aligned text on the TUI, irrespective of the frame
size. This gives me uniform experience on all the TUIs. Whether to keep
it left aligned or keep it left-aligned in the center of the frame; this
can be debated. But my following idea is about uniformity.

On graphical user interfaces (GUIs), Emacs displays a logo above the
welcome text. It is center aligned. This isn't an issue if we keep the
default frame width. But when we increase the frame-width, the logo
shifts → towards the center. But the text remains left-aligned. This
give a very odd impression.

Proposal:

There are two alternates that we can adopt.

(1) Keep both, the logo and the text, left-aligned on all frame sizes.

(2) Put both, the logo and the text, inside a box of max-width equal to
default frame-width. Keep the text left-aligned inside this box and keep
the logo center-aligned inside the box. If frame-width is increased move
→ the container box to the center of the frame. If the frame-width is
decreased reduce the width of box, keeping alignment attibutes same.

I prefer (1), this is much simpler to implement and gives uniform
experience on all screens - TUIs and GUIs.

Regards

-- 
Pankaj Jangid

GnuPG Fingerprint => 0B62 7424 3B26 A911 052A DDE6 7C95 6E6F F858 7689