Re: Display-based word wrapping

[Miles Bader <miles@gnu.org>]

Chong Yidong <cyd@stupidchicken.com> writes:
> The original patch included a `wrap-column' variable, but I'd like to
> modify this to use `truncate-lines' instead, as shown below.  This would
> mean that word wrap always uses the right window edge as a wrap column.
> Any objections?

Yes -- window width is very often the wrong thing to use.  I want to be
able to wrap at say 72 columns and not have to resize my window to
achieve that effect.

Mainly this is because (1) I often want to have window-widths which are
far wider than what's reasonable for readable text (wiiiiide text is
very hard to read), and (2) also for readability I like having a ragged
right margin which gives a bit more whitespace than you would get with
window-edge wrapping (I find right-up-to-the-edge wrapping annoying).

Of course the window width makes a good upper bound, but there
absolutely should be a way for the user to control wrapping at a lesser
point.

[Also, whatever the discussion of defaults ends up turning up, it should
at least be _possible_ to have global setting which causes there to be
no indicators at all for display-time wrapped text.]

-Miles

-- 
Quotation, n. The act of repeating erroneously the words of another. The words
erroneously repeated.