Re: on helm substantial differences

[Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>]

> Btw, just switching the order doesn't yet guarantee the names will
> align, because characters are not guaranteed to have the same width on
> display.  To really align them we need to use :align-to properties, or
> at least TABs.  Of course, using those techniques we could also align
> the display without switching the order...

Indeed, but:
- the width of the chars varies a lot less than the width of their
  names, so if you put the char column after the name column, it ends up
  pushed pretty far to the right, whereas with the other order, the chars
  stay close to their name.
- with the current `annotation-function` it's almost impossible to do
  this alignment because you don't have access to all the candidates,
  only to a single candidate at a time.
  You could arguably align based on the worst possible case (i.e. the
  longest name existing in the ucs-names database), but that would make
  the result even worse.
  So even if you want to keep the current ordering, you need to change
  the API, like Juri's patch does.


        Stefan