From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Xah Lee Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.help Subject: Re: Using proportional (variable-width) fonts in Emacs23 Date: Mon, 28 Mar 2011 16:01:41 -0700 (PDT) Organization: http://groups.google.com Message-ID: References: NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-Trace: dough.gmane.org 1301355751 26712 80.91.229.12 (28 Mar 2011 23:42:31 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@dough.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 28 Mar 2011 23:42:31 +0000 (UTC) To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org Original-X-From: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Tue Mar 29 01:42:27 2011 Return-path: Envelope-to: geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([199.232.76.165]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1Q4M4n-0000zE-UA for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Tue, 29 Mar 2011 01:42:26 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1]:48231 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1Q4M38-0001gx-75 for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Mon, 28 Mar 2011 19:40:42 -0400 Original-Path: usenet.stanford.edu!postnews.google.com!k10g2000prh.googlegroups.com!not-for-mail Original-Newsgroups: gnu.emacs.help Original-Lines: 37 Original-NNTP-Posting-Host: 76.126.112.84 Original-X-Trace: posting.google.com 1301353305 17790 127.0.0.1 (28 Mar 2011 23:01:45 GMT) Original-X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Original-NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 28 Mar 2011 23:01:45 +0000 (UTC) Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Injection-Info: k10g2000prh.googlegroups.com; posting-host=76.126.112.84; posting-account=bRPKjQoAAACxZsR8_VPXCX27T2YcsyMA User-Agent: G2/1.0 X-HTTP-UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US) AppleWebKit/534.16 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/10.0.648.204 Safari/534.16, gzip(gfe) Original-Xref: usenet.stanford.edu gnu.emacs.help:186366 X-BeenThere: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Original-Sender: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Errors-To: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.help:80496 Archived-At: On Mar 28, 9:22=A0am, Erin Brinkley wrote: > Hi! > > I'm using Emacs 23 now and LOVE using proportional fonts! (AKA variable w= idth fonts.) It FINALLY makes Emacs look beautiful, makes text easy to read= . > > But I discovered a huge problem: the fill and word wrap commands are hard= coded to work for monospaced fonts only! For instance the fill-column is b= ased on monospace fonts: if you use a proportional font and set the fill co= lumn to what you think is a reasonable number, you'll soon find out that yo= u are WRONG and you get extra whitespace at the end of a line, and words wi= ll wrap! The only way out is to set the fill-column to an insanely low numb= er, and that's not a real solution either! > > I saw a copy of the old Emacs 21 manual online where it says that yes, yo= u can use variable width fonts but the fill and wrap commands aren't yet se= t up for it. Something about how they were working on it. I'm curious how t= hat's been going over the years. Is there any support for these fonts in Em= acs now? Anyone know of a hack - kludge - tip - workaround I can try in the= meantime? I love how this looks but admit to going crazy here with all my = documents having these weird wrap problems. > > Appreciate the help everyone! as Eli Z & Tassilo H mentioned, fill-column inserts line break char at fixed number of chars per line. It's used to reformat computer code or email that require line breaks. This command isn't designed for visual wrap as the notion of margin in word processors. What you want is probably visual-line-mode. However, i wanted to say that i also use variable-width font all the time (often even when working in dired or python), and fill-column still works fine for visual purposes. Not quite sure what you mean weird wraps... Xah