Re: [O] [RFC] Shrink columns dynamically

[Rick Frankel]

So I haven't posted in a while, but i use table a lot, so here's my $0.02.

Personally, my use of width cookies has been mostly for visual display of
columns are very long and will wrap in an html or latex table export, but
would force the display too wide. My ideal default would be to have a setting
which would shrink tables a reasonable (fill-column?, window-width?) visual
display, with perhaps a min-column-width option and trying to balance the
width of each column base on its un-narrowed total width, perhaps trying to
keep narrow columns as-is in the process. For me this would probably align
cognitively with how much info is needed to grok the cell contents. As to your
behavior questions:

On Wed, Jul 12, 2017 at 12:17:26PM +0200, Nicolas Goaziou wrote:


> - Do we need two commands, one for narrowing (to a given number of
>   characters) and one for shrinking (to one character only)? Or would
>   a command toggling between the three states be sufficient?

I like a single cycling command.

> - Is there some rule of thumb to narrow a column when no width cookie is
>   supplied or should we consider this kind of columns has only two
>   states, shrunk and expanded?

So i think you are saying that a column w/ a width cookie would have three
states and one without only two? I think this in some ways negates the appeal
of separating narrowing from the cookies. Also, my suggested default narrowing
approach above would probably remove the need for cookies in many if not most
cases.

> - Supposing we focus on a single, cycling, command, how should it behave
>   when called on multiple columns at a time? Since some columns may have
>   two states and other ones three, it may end up being confusing for the
>   user.

Wouldn't a min-column-width setting to use when there is no cookie solve the
the bi- vs tri-state problem (every column has three states)

rick

P.S. and (somewhat) off topic: The doc string for
`org-ascii-table-use-ascii-art' is out of date. `ascii-art-to-unicode.el' is
now in elpa and the url no longer works.