Re: Native display of line numbers

[Stefan Monnier]

>> >   . it works significantly faster (almost twice as fast as linum-mode,
>> >     50% faster that relative-line-numbers-mode)
>> Should I read this to me that the speed difference w.r.t nlinum is not
>> that large, or you didn't bother comparing?
> See my other message: I did compare with it, of course, but the
> performance was very poor.  Maybe it wasn't supposed to provide a
> great performance in a file like xdisp.c.  Or maybe my benchmark is
> skewed (in which case I'm sure you will provide a better one).

Whether or not it's representative doesn't really matter: the
performance you see with nlinum is a real problem when you bump into it.
[ IOW, I'm not here to defend nlinum ;-)  ]

>> >   . it works with R2L text, something the old modes never did
>> I didn't know there were problems with R2L text.  Worse: even now that
>> you tell me, I can't think of nor find a problem with it (other than the
>> choice of whether to display the line numbers in the left or right
>> margin).
>
> The fact that the numbers are always displayed on the left is bad
> enough; worse, the digits in the numbers are in reverse order.  E.g.,
> visit TUTORIAL.he, then turn on linum-mode or nlinum-mode, and watch
> the numbers closely.

Duh, I had tried it, but indeed skipped the "watch the numbers closely"
part.  My naive L2R background makes me think "this looks like
a rendering bug" (especially since if I insert "123" in that tutorial,
it is displayed "123" rather than "321" despite the surrounding R2L
chars, so I wonder how come the digits in the margin end up ordered
"321").


        Stefan