Re: [wl@gnu.org: changing line heights]

[Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>]

    I wonder whether we should divide the problem into two parts:

    - One part is whether in a particular buffer 0x60/0x27 should be 
    displayed so that they look like grave/vertical quote or like open/close 
    quote.  This is determined by mode and individual user preference; this 
    problem is specific to quotes.

This seems like a clean approach, assuming we need to offer more than one
way to do it.  But it would be better to find one way that satisfies
all the problems.

It looks like the problem is that the appearances for 0x27 and 0x60
don't look right for open and close quote, but the others that look
right for open/close quote are at the same time too similar to each
other.  Is that correct?

If so, is there a way that avoids both problems?

What about displaying 0x60 as accent grave, and 0x27 as close quote?
They would not "match" in style, but they would be better as
open quote and close quote than the standard font images for
0x60 and 0x27.  Meanwhile, they would not look similar either.

    - One part is whether the glyphs at index 0x60/0x27 in a particular font 
    display as grave/vertical quote or like open/close quote.  This has 
    nothing to do with user preference or mode. Emacs could be configured so 
    that it knows about common free fonts. This part seems like it would be 
    best tackled in a general way by allowing per-font control over 
    character to glyph index mapping (or is there some way to do this in 
    Emacs do this already?).

If we need to offer multiple options, this is a good way to make them
default more correctly.  At the same time, it might be a substantial
amount of work just to enter and maintain data about lots of fonts.