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* Customizing the mode line
@ 2009-10-30 11:18 Eli Zaretskii
  2009-10-30 11:28 ` Juanma Barranquero
                   ` (5 more replies)
  0 siblings, 6 replies; 85+ messages in thread
From: Eli Zaretskii @ 2009-10-30 11:18 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: emacs-devel

Do we have some convenient UI for customizing the mode line?  The user
manual doesn't mention any.

I frequently find myself in a situation where the information that's
important to me is pushed beyond the right edge of the mode line, and
is thus invisible.  Annoyingly, a large part of the real estate of the
mode line is taken by information that is much less important, like
the percentage of the file before the window start and the list of
minor modes in effect.  The latter, for example, is quite static in
any given buffer, so once you saw it for the first time, there's no
need to continue showing it in such a central place.  However, even in
a C buffer, the mode shown is "C/l Abbrev", which is quite long.  And
when I read mail, I see something like "RMAIL XXXX/YYYY answered,
deleted"; when replying to mail it's "Mail Fly Abbrev Fill", etc.
These are very long strings that I don't need to see all the time,
because they almost never change.  But they steal too much precious
space.

By contrast, dynamic information such as the current time, the system
load, the battery condition, the mail indicator, the current function
(when in which-func-mode), etc. -- these are banished off the edge of
the mode line, and cannot be consulted.  This effectively makes these
features unavailable, unless one is willing to make her frames
unreasonably wide or even full-screen.

I consider this a bad misfeature.  What's more, modifying what's in
the mode line is not an easy task (unless I'm missing something): it
boils down to reading bindings.el and manually setting various parts
of standard-mode-line-* variables to remove or rearrange what is
shown.

Can we make the mode line display more ergonomic, or at least more
customizable?  Should I file a "wish-list" bug for this?




^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 85+ messages in thread
* Scrollbar thumbs (was: Customizing the mode line)
@ 2009-11-02 10:41 grischka
  2009-11-02 11:21 ` Scrollbar thumbs Miles Bader
  2009-11-02 14:15 ` Stefan Monnier
  0 siblings, 2 replies; 85+ messages in thread
From: grischka @ 2009-11-02 10:41 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: monnier, emacs-devel

>>         I also find the scrollbar somewhat confusing: When the end of
>>  buffer is visible in the window, I would expect the scrollbar to reach
>>  all the way to the bottom, but it does not.
>
> It does with some GUI and not with others.  In principle it should.
> The only reason for it not to is to try and work around problems when
> dragging the scrollbar thumb, where many GUI toolkits are absurdly
> dogmatic and make it pretty much impossible for Emacs to do what
> it should.

I guess it is just that these GUI toolkit people usually are trained to deliver good looking 
and pixel-precise artwork and in consequence might have some difficulties to imagine 
how it can be "pretty much impossibe" for some editor to know how many lines it is 
actually displaying (or anyway that such editor would still want to use their scrollbars).

--- grischka





^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 85+ messages in thread
* Re: Scrollbar thumbs
@ 2009-11-03 16:36 grischka
  2009-11-03 17:13 ` David Kastrup
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 85+ messages in thread
From: grischka @ 2009-11-03 16:36 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: dak; +Cc: emacs-devel

> > The simple rule is: First do it right, then do it fast.  Try to make
> > it work for small files and then you can still think about how to get
> > equally good results with larger ones.
> 
> It is not an option to make Emacs unusable on large files for the sake
> of the scrollbar idiosyncrasies of some toolkit.

In practice, if the file is large, scrollbar operations are less 
accurate and less smooth anyway, so you can get away with rough 
estimations very well without further compromising the scroll quality.

However the smaller the file the better a scrollbar can work and that 
is why accurate size calculations are especially beneficial for small 
files rsp. well choosen small parts of a file, such as at the top and 
the bottom.

--- grischka





^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 85+ messages in thread
* Re: Scrollbar thumbs
@ 2009-11-07 11:50 grischka
  2009-11-07 16:38 ` Óscar Fuentes
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 85+ messages in thread
From: grischka @ 2009-11-07 11:50 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: ofv; +Cc: emacs-devel

Óscar Fuentes wrote:
> Sure, the Real World is slowly adapting to the rules stated by some
> illuminated GUI toolkit designers.

The entire Real World?  No! A small village of indomitable lisp hackers
still holds out against the visual invasion, fortified by their magic
knowledge of the mantras that allow them to transform pure human will
into virtual user interfaces located in the user herself.

--- grischka





^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 85+ messages in thread

end of thread, other threads:[~2009-11-09 23:14 UTC | newest]

Thread overview: 85+ messages (download: mbox.gz follow: Atom feed
-- links below jump to the message on this page --
2009-10-30 11:18 Customizing the mode line Eli Zaretskii
2009-10-30 11:28 ` Juanma Barranquero
2009-10-30 13:38 ` Stefan Monnier
2009-10-30 15:15   ` Eli Zaretskii
2009-10-30 16:54     ` Drew Adams
2009-10-30 17:18       ` Eli Zaretskii
2009-10-30 19:12       ` Stefan Monnier
2009-10-30 20:39         ` Eli Zaretskii
2009-10-31  5:16   ` Miles Bader
2009-10-31  8:47     ` Eli Zaretskii
2009-10-31 10:00       ` Juanma Barranquero
2009-10-31 16:03       ` Drew Adams
2009-10-31 16:29         ` Eli Zaretskii
2009-10-31 17:03           ` Drew Adams
2009-10-31  6:09   ` Manoj Srivastava
2009-10-31 10:31     ` Štěpán Němec
2009-10-31 20:38     ` Scrollbar thumbs (was: Customizing the mode line) Stefan Monnier
2009-11-01  3:11       ` Scrollbar thumbs Miles Bader
2009-11-02  6:55         ` Stefan Monnier
2009-11-02  7:41           ` Jason Rumney
2009-11-02 14:10             ` Stefan Monnier
2009-11-04 16:36   ` Customizing the mode line Evil Boris
2009-10-30 15:01 ` joakim
2009-10-30 15:25   ` Eli Zaretskii
2009-10-30 21:55     ` Stephen Berman
2009-10-30 17:45 ` Chong Yidong
2009-10-30 20:41   ` Eli Zaretskii
2009-10-30 20:56     ` Lennart Borgman
2009-10-31  0:13   ` Stefan Monnier
2009-10-31  5:17     ` Justin Bogner
2009-10-31  5:19   ` Miles Bader
2009-10-31 11:07 ` Richard Stallman
2009-10-31 11:19   ` Juanma Barranquero
2009-11-01  9:28     ` Richard Stallman
2009-11-01 15:21       ` Juanma Barranquero
2009-10-31 11:27   ` Eli Zaretskii
2009-10-31 14:09     ` Robert J. Chassell
2009-10-31 14:30       ` Eli Zaretskii
2009-10-31 22:13         ` Robert J. Chassell
2009-10-31 22:40         ` Robert J. Chassell
2009-11-01  3:49           ` Eli Zaretskii
2009-10-31 18:55       ` Juanma Barranquero
2009-10-31 17:46     ` M Jared Finder
2009-10-31 18:30       ` Eli Zaretskii
2009-10-31 19:02       ` Juanma Barranquero
2009-10-31 14:33 ` Chong Yidong
2009-10-31 15:45   ` Eli Zaretskii
2009-10-31 18:07     ` Chong Yidong
2009-10-31 18:21       ` Eli Zaretskii
  -- strict thread matches above, loose matches on Subject: below --
2009-11-02 10:41 Scrollbar thumbs (was: Customizing the mode line) grischka
2009-11-02 11:21 ` Scrollbar thumbs Miles Bader
2009-11-03  0:48   ` grischka
2009-11-03  9:27     ` David Kastrup
2009-11-04  0:09     ` Miles Bader
2009-11-04  9:51       ` grischka
2009-11-04 11:18         ` joakim
2009-11-04 19:29           ` Jan Djärv
2009-11-04 20:57             ` Stefan Monnier
2009-11-05  1:18               ` YAMAMOTO Mitsuharu
2009-11-09 23:14                 ` YAMAMOTO Mitsuharu
2009-11-05  9:23               ` Jan D.
2009-11-05 13:59                 ` Stefan Monnier
2009-11-05 15:16               ` grischka
2009-11-05 15:32                 ` Lennart Borgman
2009-11-05 15:35                 ` Óscar Fuentes
2009-11-05 16:07                 ` David Kastrup
2009-11-05 23:55                   ` Jason Rumney
2009-11-06  0:31                     ` Miles Bader
2009-11-06  3:10                     ` Stephen J. Turnbull
2009-11-06  4:37                       ` Miles Bader
2009-11-06  8:42                     ` David Kastrup
2009-11-06  8:55                     ` Eli Zaretskii
2009-11-02 14:15 ` Stefan Monnier
2009-11-03  0:32   ` grischka
2009-11-03  1:18     ` Stefan Monnier
2009-11-03  5:37       ` grischka
2009-11-03 13:38         ` Stefan Monnier
2009-11-03 21:10           ` grischka
2009-11-03 23:00             ` Stefan Monnier
2009-11-03 10:02   ` joakim
2009-11-05  9:21     ` Jan D.
2009-11-03 16:36 grischka
2009-11-03 17:13 ` David Kastrup
2009-11-07 11:50 grischka
2009-11-07 16:38 ` Óscar Fuentes
2009-11-07 17:47   ` David De La Harpe Golden

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