bug#7004: 23.2; In fullscreen mode, the echo area takes too much vertical space

[Tassilo Horn <tassilo@member.fsf.org>]

Dani Moncayo <dmoncayo@gmail.com> writes:

Hi Dani,

> When I put Emacs in fullscreen mode, it seems to me that the last line
> (echo area/minibuffer) takes too much, unnecessary vertical space.

What would you expect instead?

I think, this is not an emacs problem, but it has something to do with
window managers.  I'm no expert in Emacs' frame stuff or window
managers, but I think, it is something along this.

Emacs issues size hints to the window manager, which tells it the width
and height of how emacs wants to be painted.  These sizes are exactly
divisible by the number of lines/columns emacs should display, which
depends on font size and stuff like that.

If the window manager honores these hints, then is it likely that a
fully maximized emacs frame (or a fullscreen frame) does not fill the
whole screen, but there is a gap of at most one line/column size in
pixels minus one pixel.

Because that somehow looks ugly, many window managers decide not to
honor hints at least for fullscreen/maximized windows.  They stretch the
window to the exact display size, and then you have the effect you
describe.  So you don't see one unnecessary line, but only some percent
of a unnecessary line.  Even if it is 99%, it's still no full line.
IMHO, that's much better than a gap.

I know that at least there was or is a problem with emacs built with GTK
in conjunction with the KDE window manager.  There, maximizing emacs did
honor the hints, and you got the gaps.  But the real problem was that
the window manager would not recognize emacs as a maximized window in
that case.

Bye,
Tassilo