Re: Fill column indicator and org indent mode

[Tim Cross <theophilusx@gmail.com>]

I was using fci, but found all sorts of problems when it comes to
org-mode. In addition to the issue you mention, you will also find
'spurious' additional characters turning up in things like html exports
of your org files. I also started getting font-lock errors when I tried
to edit special blocks using C-c ' and a number of other bits of weird
behaviour.

Once I dropped fci and configured the whitespace package to show
characters past my fill column in a different colour, all the odd issues
I was seeing just vanished and my exports were working correctly again.

I preferred using fci and even used it for a while before I started
seeing problems. It was only once I stopped using it I realised that
many of the minor issues I was experiencing were due to fci and org
incompatibilities.

I did dig into this and found some others who had experienced similar
issues and even some partial fixes, but in the end, they still didn't
help with some of the more annoying issues and were likely to introduce
other problems.

While whitespace mode can provide similar functionality, I don't think
it will adjust to the org indentation as well. The problem is that these
packages just consider the screen and is not aware of mode level
specifics. Of the two, I suspect you could make whitespace act more
'dynamically' than fci, but we probably really need an org-aware column
indicator package/extension.

tim

Galen Menzel writes:

> Hi all,
>
> I use [Semantic 
> linefeeds](http://rhodesmill.org/brandon/2012/one-sentence-per-line/) 
> for a lot of my org files, for which having a visual indicator of column 
> 80 is useful. I'm currently using 
> [`fill-column-indicator`](https://github.com/alpaker/Fill-Column-Indicator) 
> for this, but the column indicator does not adjust for the indention 
> level when using `org-indent-mode` —it just draws straight down on 
> column 80 of the frame, regardless of the line's indention level. (So in 
> a line under a level-3 headline with `org-indent-indentation-per-level` 
> set to 2, the fill column indicator will appear on column 80 of the 
> frame, which is actually column 76 of the line.)
>
> Is anyone aware of a solution to displaying the fill column in a way 
> that takes the indention level into account?
>
> Thanks!
>
> Best,
>
> Galen


-- 
Tim Cross