We can do that... I was just trying to avoid using ?| by default in any case. There is also the case when a user sets ?| by default and then call the function. If the check we add is just comparing to the default value then ?| will be always overwritten so an extra internal variable will be needed to cache where the ?| comes from. But OK, if this use case seems to be general enough I can make this changes. BTW. Have you seen my comments about the display engine in the other issue? Best, Ergus On August 6, 2019 8:26:22 PM GMT+02:00, Eli Zaretskii wrote: >> Date: Tue, 6 Aug 2019 19:51:46 +0200 >> From: Ergus >> Cc: juri@linkov.net, 36861@debbugs.gnu.org >> >> >I don't think I understand the problem. Why doesn't just setting >the >> >characters and the mode variable work as expected? AFAIU, one needs >> >to call the mode function only if one wants Emacs to deduce the >> >indicator character automatically. >> >> Hi: >> >> It should work as you say. But the default value for >> display-fill-column-indicator-character is nil until the mode >function >> is executed (at least once). >> >> I think that what they want is >display-fill-column-indicator-character >> to be non-nil without initialization; which we cannot set without >some >> checks. > >Why can't we set display-fill-column-indicator-character to ?| by >default? Invoking the mode function will still do its job, but at >least people who want to just set the variable will have a functional >feature. Am I missing something? -- Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.