From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Eli Zaretskii Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: Variable-width font indentation Date: Thu, 08 Mar 2018 15:44:43 +0200 Message-ID: <838tb2ptpw.fsf@gnu.org> References: <87inaiss6l.fsf@web.de> <6FCF6ACA-4F29-4B6B-BE9D-D7130C6E9495@gnu.org> <87fu5moe4c.fsf@web.de> <877eqyocro.fsf@web.de> <83zi3uz4nb.fsf@gnu.org> <0b1dd3fa-e0b0-ed20-a256-dd92d1c1826f@dancol.org> <8bc3c4c7-dfc7-987a-95e7-bd309e2326c6@cs.ucla.edu> <03118DC0-39DA-4AB5-980E-A33809B9A5EE@raeburn.org> <83vaeas8uz.fsf@gnu.org> <83lgf6s3aa.fsf@gnu.org> <838tb5rxoe.fsf@gnu.org> <83lgf5q73p.fsf@gnu.org> <4742f0ae-86b5-48f9-4601-4dbba9e6380d@gmail.com> <83bmfzreaq.fsf@gnu.org> Reply-To: Eli Zaretskii NNTP-Posting-Host: blaine.gmane.org X-Trace: blaine.gmane.org 1520516605 21686 195.159.176.226 (8 Mar 2018 13:43:25 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@blaine.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 8 Mar 2018 13:43:25 +0000 (UTC) Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org To: Stefan Monnier Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Thu Mar 08 14:43:20 2018 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([208.118.235.17]) by blaine.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.84_2) (envelope-from ) id 1etvpH-0005Xb-Pr for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Thu, 08 Mar 2018 14:43:19 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:39146 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1etvrK-0007a5-CI for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Thu, 08 Mar 2018 08:45:26 -0500 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:48693) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1etvqm-0007Zr-Rn for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 08 Mar 2018 08:44:53 -0500 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1etvqh-0003zS-U8 for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 08 Mar 2018 08:44:52 -0500 Original-Received: from fencepost.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::e]:59455) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1etvqh-0003ym-R9; Thu, 08 Mar 2018 08:44:47 -0500 Original-Received: from [176.228.60.248] (port=3692 helo=home-c4e4a596f7) by fencepost.gnu.org with esmtpsa (TLS1.2:RSA_AES_256_CBC_SHA1:256) (Exim 4.82) (envelope-from ) id 1etvqh-0001u2-8m; Thu, 08 Mar 2018 08:44:47 -0500 In-reply-to: (message from Stefan Monnier on Wed, 07 Mar 2018 23:50:45 -0500) X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: GNU/Linux 2.2.x-3.x [generic] X-Received-From: 2001:4830:134:3::e X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.21 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: "Emacs-devel" Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:223496 Archived-At: > From: Stefan Monnier > Date: Wed, 07 Mar 2018 23:50:45 -0500 > > >> In your world, concretely, what happens when I open xdisp.c and press M-x > >> variable-pitch-mode? Does everything look misaligned until I M-x > >> indent-region the whole file? > > Yes. It isn't different from what happens when you change tab-width. > > It's different in one important way: > - it's considered normal to impose that everyone who looks/edits this > file needs to have tad-width set to a particular value (8, > traditionally). > - it's not considered normal to impose that everyone who looks/edits > this file needs to use the same *font*. The above doesn't force any particular font, just a fixed-pitch one, a limitation we already have today. So we will be no worse. > Also, you can easily circumvent the tag-width issue by not using TABs in > your file, whereas it's hard to have a file whose appearance is not > affected by the choice of font. Yes, using variable-pitch fonts in code where indentation is important has its disadvantages, and always will. Any solution will have the same issues, just under different use cases and situations. That's why this is not the main use case where we should support variable-pitch fonts well, the main use case is in text-related modes, where in many/most cases the indentation is rigid or changes proportionally with the width of some canonical character.