Vector graphics overlays

["Elias Mårtenson" <lokedhs@gmail.com>]

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A few times now, when developing Emacs modes, I have found myself wishing
that there was a way of doing graphical overlays on top of the text in a
buffer.

In one case, I wanted to draw arrows connecting elements in a Common Lisp
buffer in order to visually connect related symbols with arrows.

In other cases I have wanted to highlight sections of text using symbols
and graphics that floats on top (semi-transparent) of the text being edited.

I figured that one way of dealing with this would be to have the ability to
overlay SVG graphics on top of the text being edited. I was about to start
actually implementing this when someone pointed out to me that this would
be completely incompatible with running Emacs in text mode (although I was
thinking to myself that so is inline images, and that's a supported
feature).

What is the opinion about this? Is this something that has been discussed
previously, and if so, what was the outcome?

Regards,
Elias

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