On Thu, Aug 27, 2015 at 3:29 PM, Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> wrote:

> > `follow-mode' has to synchronize the ‘window-end’ of one window with the
> > ‘window-start’ of another.
>
> Not when one of them is temporarily obscured by a resized mini-window,
> IMO.
>

I think that is indeed a matter of opinion (and should thus be subject to
customization), but I don't think we should assume that recursive editing
invocations or long message scenarios are always short-lived.

> Since mini-window resizing can persistently
> > change the end position of the first of these windows
>
> Any command that clears the echo area will resize it back, AFAIK.  So
> it's not persistent.
>

That's not what I'm seeing here. When I run:

(progn
  (run-with-timer 2 nil (lambda () (message "hi")))
  (run-with-timer 3 nil (lambda () (message "")))
  (read-from-minibuffer (make-string 3000 ?*)))

The minibuffer resizes once, when the read-from-minibuffer prompt makes it
grow to its maximal size; it then stays at that size as the short message
is being displayed, then restores the long minibuffer prompt without
changing size again when the echo area is cleared.


> > OT1H we do care about point being visible when its window is partially
> > obscured by the mini-window and deliberately scroll the window in that
> > case.  OTOH we'd say that `follow-mode' should not care about keeping
> > its text coherent in that case.  Is that fair?
>
> Yes.  In that situation, the user most probably reads the mini-window
> text anyway, and if not, then she reads the text at point.  The
> probability that she is reading the text that will be scrolled out of
> view as result of the mini-window resize is IMO minuscule.
>

So if, for whatever reason, I have a timer function that displays a
two-line message once a second (so the echo area never goes back to its
single-line state), my follow-mode buffer will be and remain in an
inconsistent state until I manually resize a window, when it will go back
to a consistent state, but then if I cancel the timer (and the mini-window
shrinks) it'll be in an inconsistent state again, and the only way out of
that one is another manual window resize?

I think that last case is something we haven't considered yet: if I resize
windows manually while the mini-window is enlarged, they will be in an
inconsistent state when it goes back to normal, right?