Re: Better handling of window margins

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: John Wiegley <address@hidden>
> Cc: Eli Zaretskii <address@hidden>,  address@hidden
> Date: Sat, 05 Dec 2015 21:02:04 -0800
> 
> >>>>> Stefan Monnier <address@hidden> writes:
> 
> >> If we want to be able to control the order, we will have to completely
> >> redesign how display in the margins works, because currently this is
> >> completely determined by the order we traverse the buffer text during
> >> redisplay, i.e. the 'margin' display property that is on buffer position
> >> displayed more to the left will be displayed before the one to its right.
> 
> > Yes, and it's for this problem that I suggest we introduce a new Elisp API
> > to manage margin display properties (and make the API be line-based).
> 
> Do we really want to make margins more capable like this, or is there a better
> way to approach this problem?

Good question.  I don't know.  In fact, I find it hard to define the
problem we are trying to solve.

What I suggested should allow several packages displaying in the
margin without interfering with each other.  That is already a
solution that looks for a problem, since the most complex use case I'm
aware of involves one package that displays in the margin and another
that just needs the margins to be of certain width, but doesn't
display anything there.

Now we are talking about going even farther into the fantasy land, and
imagine packages that also want to control the order with which their
stuff is displayed in the margins.  Sounds like over-engineering to
me, but if someone can show such packages, perhaps it's not fantasy
after all.