Re: current compile.el issues

[Stefan Monnier]

>> I don't find the fringe arrow very helpful, especially if there's no
>> fringe!  It's also not the behaviour I've been used to for many years.
> Well I guess, I'll revert the fringe arrow and do an overlay instead.

Please don't revert it.  Fell free to add an overlay, but the overlay will
have its own problems, most importantly: how can we choose face attributes
that make the text more visible but still legible, even in the various
possible choices of foreground/background colors for the default face, for
the compilation-file-error-face (or whatever the face's name is), ...

Given that RMS just changed the default context to 0 lines (thus getting
back to the old behavior), there's actually no more work that has to be
done.  If you want overlay faces, feel free.  I personally prefer the less
intrusive arrow.

>> > A major concern would be that the point may be so far from the
>> > message that you can't display both in one window at the same time.

I don't think we should worry about this case.  The old compile.el did not
pay any attention to it and noone was bothered AFAIK.

>> > Do you want the comint window to then get split?
>> I guess that would be a reasonable solution if it's necessary.

Yuck.  I don't want Emacs to split my windows just because it thinks that
maybe I don't want point moved in one of them.

>> > This could be done with the new next-error-function, which you could
>> > set to a save-excursion`ed variant in comint-buffers.
>> I've yet to understand what to do with that stuff, now it's changed
>> under me again.

There's nothing to be done with it for modes using compile.el.  It's for use
by modes which don't use compile.el but want to hook into C-x `.


        Stefan