Re: Problems with info (emacs version)

[Luc Teirlinck]

Stefan Monnier wrote:

   I think we should solve the above as follows:
   Instead of marking lines as:

      * CVS:(cvs).                      The CVS thingy.
           ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
           (display "             ")

   we should mark them as follows:

      * CVS:(cvs).                      The CVS thingy.
           ^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
         invisible (display (space :align-to 24))

   the idea being that `display' is only used to turn a set of spaces
   into some other representation of "some number of space".  and the
   text that's really made invisible uses the `invisible' property,
   so the rest of Emacs knows better how to handle it.

That would be a big improvement.  I still believe that it is necessary
to make sure that the user knows that there is invisible text in the
buffer (otherwise there are just countless ways the user could get
confused, I just pointed out some examples) and to provide a
convenient command to toggle invisible text, which could, for instance
behave minor-mode style.  After the change you suggest, providing such
a command should be trivial, it would just have to toggle
buffer-invisibility-spec between t and nil.  Of course, one should
also make sure that the user knows about the command.

Sincerely,

Luc.