Re: Proportional fonts in the mode line (one month test)

[Jim Porter <jporterbugs@gmail.com>]

On 11/26/2021 4:35 AM, Lars Ingebrigtsen wrote:
> The one wrinkle here, though, is that in this case, one of the
> characters used here -- "%" -- is usually much wider than the "normal
> character width", so ensuring no movement at all would mean that the "-"
> would be surrounded by a lot of space.

This points to a similar problem I mentioned, but in reverse: If a 
buffer is currently read-only and I click the first "%", it will change 
to "-"[1] and thus become narrower. Depending on where my mouse pointer 
is, that could mean it's now hovering over the "modified" indicator, so 
if I click again, I end up changing the "modified" state, not the 
"read-only" state.

I think for a series of consecutive buttons, we should do whatever we 
can to ensure that they don't shift positions unnecessarily, and 
especially not when clicking on them. Whether this is ensured by 
:min-width/:max-width specifications, monospace fonts, or using (SVG) 
icons doesn't matter too much, so long as the buttons aren't shifting 
around. A monospace font does have the advantage of being the easiest 
solution though; it Just Works today.

- Jim

[1] Assuming the buffer is unmodified.