Re: macos.texi updated

[Adrian Robert <arobert@cogsci.ucsd.edu>]

[-- Attachment #1.1: Type: text/plain, Size: 3213 bytes --]


On Oct 11, 2005, at 10:44 AM, Richard M. Stallman wrote:

>       (I guess I was
>     trying to say, "drop XLFD, and if some functionality is lost,  
> update
>     the lisp syntax to fix it".)
>
> We don't need to change Emacs for that.  You should be able, already,
> to do whatever you like in Emacs without using XLFD syntax.  What  
> is there
> that cannot be done except with XLFD syntax?

Since I use Emacs on Aqua, which does not expose XLFD anywhere, I  
can't speak directly as a user.  But looking at the situation from  
the inside on the unicode-2 branch, it appears that there are several  
major places in the code that expect all of the information for  
specifying a font to be contained in a single string.  At the elisp- 
wielding-user-visible level this manifests in what you pass to and  
get back from x-list-fonts, as well as any font-setting functions,  
setting font as a frame parameter, etc...  I can't tell whether other  
platforms could use some other single-string-specifies-all format  
besides XLFD (not that this would be natural), or if other code in  
fontset.c and xfaces.c requires these names to be XLFD.  All I know  
is that in the Cocoa port, I'm having trouble getting the full font  
machinery working without putting all font info into string names.

In any case, both lisp code and user mailing list traffic for the Mac  
Carbon emacs contain numerous references to XLFD.  E.g.:

See for example:

http://search.gmane.org/?query=-apple- 
courier&email=&group=gmane.emacs.macintosh.osx&sort=relevance&DEFAULTOP= 
and&xP=apple-.&xFILTERS=Gemacs.macintosh.osx---A

http://cvs.sourceforge.jp/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/macemacsjp/carbon_font/ 
carbon-font.el

Anyway, I will drop this now due to an intense lack of interest from  
anyone else on this list ;), and come back when 22 is out and/or I  
have some code to show..


>   I think perhaps some
> command line option uses it.  We could replace that option with
> one that uses a different syntax, but what syntax should it be?
>
>     .default {
>      font-family: courier;
>      font-size: 13pt;
>      font-weight: bold;
>      font-style: italic;
>     }
>
> I don't think that is useful in an Emacs context.
> It is no easier to type, no more concise, than a list
> of face attributes in Lisp syntax.  Where would we possibly
> want to use it?

My point was that the XLFD is so concise and cryptic as to be a real  
hassle no matter what it's used for.  I really don't see any typing  
savings for something like

emacs -font '-*-courier-*-*-*--12-*-*-*-*-*-*-*'

or even

emacs -font '-*-courier-*-*-*--12-*'

vs.

emacs -font '{ font-family: courier font-size: 12pt }'

If you're not cutting/pasting the font, counting out how many  
asterisks you need and deciding where to put the '12' are far more  
time-consuming than punching out the few extra characters for CSS- 
style.  And if you are cutting/pasting, there's no difference,  
besides readability.

But given that things are as they are, I see no reason to add a new  
syntax either if it's not needed for lisp customization -- using XLFD  
on the command line seems fine since users on the non-X systems  
rarely use command-line invocation anyhow.


[-- Attachment #1.2: Type: text/html, Size: 4797 bytes --]

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/plain, Size: 142 bytes --]

_______________________________________________
Emacs-devel mailing list
Emacs-devel@gnu.org
http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/emacs-devel