Re: fringe buffer-boundary bitmaps

[storm@cua.dk (Kim F. Storm)]

"Richard M. Stallman" <rms@gnu.org> writes:

>     A related issue is the name of the bitmaps -- currently the names
>     reflect the physical appearance of the default bitmaps, but I think it
>     would be better if the names reflected their logical use.
>
> If there is a fixed correspondence between uses and names, which
> appears to be the case, then I agree with you.  Also, the doc string
> of define-fringe-bitmap ought to list these standard names, because
> there is no other doc string to find them in.


>
> However, I think it would be cleaner to keep the names as they are,
> referring to the bitmap appearance, and add a layer where you specify
> which bitmap to use for each standard purpose.  So if you want to use
> a little "EOB" for the end of the buffer, you'd put that in a bitmap
> named little-eob, then specify to use little-eob for end of buffer.

I disagree this would be much cleaner.

The implementation is already quite tricky, as there are already
several levels of preferences involved in deciding which bitmaps to
show left and right for a specific row.

And it would require that we define all the build-in bitmaps 
An extra layer of indirection does not give us any advantages IMO.



> indicate-buffer-boundaries would be the place to specify this.

I don't see why the mapping should be restricted to just the bitmaps
used for buffer boundaries ?


IMO, this is a lot of extra work for _NO_ added benefit.

My vote is for just changing the names of the bitmaps to reflect the
purpose rather than apperance.  

To do that, we just have to change the names of the symbols defined in
fringe.el (compared to your suggested change which requires a lot of
work at the C level).

-- 
Kim F. Storm <storm@cua.dk> http://www.cua.dk