Overlay arrow in *compilation* and *grep* buffers

[Nick Roberts]

 > Moreover, next-error scrolls the display to keep the current line at
 > the top of the window.  I think it's a bit silly to mark the with an
 > arrow a line that is always at the top of its window; such an arrow
 > might make sense if we do not scroll the window except when the
 > current line is no longer visible.  Perhaps we need a user option to
 > control these two features (scrolling and arrow) in a way that would
 > by default prevent scrolling when the arrow is used to show the
 > current line.

I made a similar point on emacs-devel:

compile-goto-error
Tue, 16 Nov 2004

Juri pointed me to compilation-context-lines and Stefan said:

SM> I recently realized that while the 0-context sometimes makes sense for
SM> C-x `, the "don't move" behavior would be preferable when getting
SM> to an error by using RET or mouse-2 on the actual error text.

 > Finally, I don't really understand why new features such as this one
 > get installed while we are in a feature freeze.  At the very least, it
 > should have been discussed (such a discussion could also lead to
 > better design decisions wrt scrolling).  However, I couldn't find
 > anything related in emacs-devel archives (sorry if I missed
 > something).

They were discussed as part of a thread that started as a bug report on
emacs-pretest-bug:

fringe arrow conflict between compile and gud?
JUAN-LEON Lahoz Garcia
Wed, 23 Mar 2005

I guess its a chicken and egg situation but a proper feature freeze that
lasted over a year would surely set back development.


Nick