Re: master d014a5e: Use fixed-pitch font for display-line-numbers

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> Date: Tue, 11 Jul 2017 23:18:00 -0400
> From: Mark Oteiza <mvoteiza@udel.edu>
> Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org
> 
> > One disadvantage of that is that now any changes to fixed-pitch-serif
> > must also consider their effect on line-number.
> 
> Ah, I considered it a good thing to have one less place where
> a particular typeface (well, in this case an alias) is specified.
> I think of fixed-pitch, fixed-pitch-serif, and variable-pitch as places
> to pick a family so other faces can inherit from them by default.
> 
> Put another way, one would only have to change one face to change the
> monospace serif, instead of however each face specifying :family
> "Monospace Serif" or some other typeface.  Though, perhaps I'm
> misunderstanding face-font-family-alternatives.

That's indeed the dilemma here: on the one hand this makes it easier
to change several faces, but OTOH the change must also satisfy the
requirements and user expectations of each of the inheriting faces.  I
don't know which of these is more important.  In practice, we did have
a couple of cases where some face was changed, and many moons later
someone complained that this had an adverse effect on one of the
inheriting faces.