Re: ruler support in hexl mode

[Kim F. Storm]

Richard Stallman <address@hidden> writes:

>     > Should this be documented in the Lisp manual along with the :align-to
>     > feature?
> 
>     I think it would be better do add :align-to support to the text terminal.
>     It is on my to-do list to add that.
> 
> That would be a step forward.  However, I don't know how soon
> you will have time to work on this.  If it won't be soon, maybe
> we should document the current situation in the manual now.

I can work on it quite soon.

> 
>     It should be possible to say :align-to 'text-left to have text in the
>     header line (or mode line) exactly aligned to the left edge of the text
>     area of the window.


I have been thinking about a different (and IMHO much better) approach
for :align-to on header line and mode line:

Currently, :align-to on normal text lines are relative to the left
text area margin, while for header and mode lines, :align-to is
relative to the left edge of the window (outside fringes, scroll-bar,
and display margin).

My suggestion is that (by default) :align-to in header and mode lines
should also be relative to the left edge of the text area,
e.g. :align-to 0 would align exactly to the first column of the text
area.

The advantage of this approach is that we would then use the same
values for alignment as in the text area, and consequently not require
any special parameters for the "normal" case.

If you want to align header or mode line to a specific "non-text" display
element, use something like
  :align-to 'left-fringe
  :align-to '(+ left-margin 2)
  :align-to 'left-scroll-bar

This seems much more logical than the current approach.

The only real problem with this is that it isn't backwards compatible
with the 21.1 behaviour.  But I suppose there are not that many
packages using :align-to in header line (yet).

WDYT?

-- 
Kim F. Storm <address@hidden> http://www.cua.dk