Re: Emacs26: Quick thoughts on display-line-numbers-mode

[Robert Weiner]

On Thu, Oct 5, 2017 at 3:02 PM, Eli Zaretskii <address@hidden> wrote:

linum-mode displays line numbers in the left display margin.  I think
usurping the display margins for a display-related feature as popular
as line numbers is a bad idea, because it clashes with other
specialized features which want to use the margins, so I explicitly
coded the native line-number display not to do that.  Therefore, I
will object to having this new display on the display margins, even as
an option.

​Ok.

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Separation between the numbers and the text is still kept, by means of

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a white-space glyph.

​So could you add a customization option for this glyph that would provide some visual separation, e.g. a hairline or something similar to the visual linum-mode provides?

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> Then linum-mode should be removed (maybe add an alias) so there is no confusion as to which mode should

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> be used.

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I'm waiting for the pretests and the feedback we get to see if this

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can be done.  It's possible that in some rare situations the new mode

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will be inconvenient or unable to support.  If no such reports come

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in, we will indeed retire linum-mode when Emacs 26.1 is released.

​Ok.​

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> 2. The mode-line popup menu that displays/hides line and col numbers in the mode=line could be expanded to

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> toggle this mode on and off locally and globally, as well as providing options for its various display settings:

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> relative, visual and absolute.

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I'm not sure I agree.  The mode-line menu is for displays on the mode

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line.  The display-line-numbers-mode and its variants can be turned on

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or off from the menu bar's Options menu.

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I see your point but do think in practice a lot of people would look to the mode-line menu if they could.  Also, having all the options in one place would let people decide which to use at any given point without hunting around.  I know I look at mode-lines a lot more than the menubar.  It would also force a cleanup of the menu item naming so that it was obvious where each option will display its numbers.

​Bob

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