From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Stefan Monnier Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.help Subject: Re: Using proportional (variable-width) fonts in Emacs23 Date: Thu, 31 Mar 2011 00:58:55 -0400 Organization: A noiseless patient Spider Message-ID: References: <898836.13190.qm@web121803.mail.ne1.yahoo.com> <4d9120aa$0$23756$14726298@news.sunsite.dk> <47119ce7-b1d1-4967-aa3e-d10112f10510@q40g2000prh.googlegroups.com> <4d9232cb$0$23752$14726298@news.sunsite.dk> <516de695-18e0-4442-9616-63bc24b99a58@18g2000prd.googlegroups.com> <4d92ead3$0$23757$14726298@news.sunsite.dk> <87sju47n29.fsf@kuiper.lan.informatimago.com> <33669aa8-47ea-48c5-8dc9-fb216893ef03@f15g2000pro.googlegroups.com> <87fwq47ggx.fsf@kuiper.lan.informatimago.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain X-Trace: dough.gmane.org 1301550107 11096 80.91.229.12 (31 Mar 2011 05:41:47 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@dough.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 31 Mar 2011 05:41:47 +0000 (UTC) To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org Original-X-From: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Thu Mar 31 07:41:43 2011 Return-path: Envelope-to: geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([199.232.76.165]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1Q5Ada-0005kH-HD for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Thu, 31 Mar 2011 07:41:42 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1]:51991 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1Q5AdZ-0008Bb-R9 for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Thu, 31 Mar 2011 01:41:41 -0400 Original-Path: usenet.stanford.edu!news-transit.tcx.org.uk!eternal-september.org!feeder.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail Original-Newsgroups: gnu.emacs.help Original-Lines: 18 Injection-Info: mx02.eternal-september.org; posting-host="Rc/o2wimoXob2ZL5QYUYbQ"; logging-data="25492"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX183qZhKG5iBf5rrhRH0spgS" User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/24.0.50 (gnu/linux) Cancel-Lock: sha1:KqJIYB1OOxZX7vwol468dZEJQqY= sha1:m3s9xc7cMkjz6opbL2ALjzwty5U= Original-Xref: usenet.stanford.edu gnu.emacs.help:186433 X-BeenThere: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Original-Sender: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Errors-To: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.help:80555 Archived-At: > Not necessarily. In Emacs, we can specify that text be displayed > aligned to a specific width in pixels. See the node "Specified Space" > in the ELisp manual. Perhaps display of programming languages could > use this feature to align program source even with proportional fonts. I don't think we have good support for that in the display engine right now, but we do have some amount of support for it and it's not used for that purpose, and I think there's a good reason: there is no place to store the necessary information in the file. So while you might be able to do align on-demand and even maintain that alignment as the buffer is edited, it's difficult to infer the needed alignment from the source file: I think that the information present in the file is sufficient for 90% of the cases, but the remaining 10% is problematic (and even getting those 90% working might be dependent on the language, i.e. on the major-mode). Stefan