Mouse highlight in *compilation* buffers

Mouse highlight in *compilation* buffers

[Eli Zaretskii]

The mouse-face highlighting of compiler messages is sometimes too
greedy, I think.  For example, if the message text is

  foo.c:5: warning: implicit declaration of function `bar'

then the mouse-face property extends up to and excluding the colon
that is after the "warning" part.  Do we want that, or is the intent
to highlight only the file name and the line number?  I think it's the
latter, because an error message, like this:

  foo.c:11: error: conflicting types for 'bar'

does _not_ have the "error" part highlighted, i.e. mouse-face ends at
the colon after the line number.  So for consistency's sake, the
"warning" part should not be highlighted as well.  (It looks like
"warning" is treated specially due to its appearance in
compilation-error-regexp-alist-alist.)

RE: Mouse highlight in *compilation* buffers

[Drew Adams]

    The mouse-face highlighting of compiler messages is sometimes too
    greedy.... Do we want that, or is the intent
    to highlight only the file name and the line number?

FWIW, in my own copy of Emacs, I put mouse-face on the whole line, so it is
easier to 1) click and 2) highlight - you can move up and down the buffer
with no attention to horizontal position. I do the same thing for Dired.

This is particularly helpful for seeing what aligns (belongs) with what
(e.g. in Dired).  It's kind of like using a ruler to scan entries in a phone
book. If you would like to try it, to see the effect:
http://www.emacswiki.org/elisp/dired-plus.el.