Re: Fill column indicator functionality

[Basil L. Contovounesios]

Ergus <address@hidden> writes:

> That's exactly the same I would like to have. With a small plus of being
> compatible with show-trailing-whitespace.
>
> I will start the post in reddit once I understand how to use it.
>
>
> On Wed, Feb 06, 2019 at 03:48:42PM -0500, John Yates wrote:
>>On Wed, Feb 6, 2019 at 11:09 AM Eli Zaretskii <address@hidden> wrote:
>>> Perhaps you should start a poll on Reddit about this, and we can then
>>> see how many people would like to use such a feature.  Do many people
>>> share you dissatisfaction with solutions that show fill-column only
>>> when it is crossed, for example?
>>
>>I do not follow (proper verb?) Reddit.  That said I have desired
>>such a feature for years.
>>
>>My use case (assumed very common) is actively entering / editing
>>mono-spaced text within a window that is at least somewhat wider
>>than the column about which I want some visual forewarning.  If I
>>am merely reading I most likely do not care to have such a visual
>>clue.
>>
>>I would be entirely happy with an ability to draw a single
>>vertical line at a nominal "physical" column (not necessarily the
>>fill-column).  That line would be drawn irrespective of wrapped
>>continuations or other edge cases.  If the column is beyond the
>>window edge then the line simply would not get drawn.  If the
>>effect is ill-defined / unpalatable I would be happy to do
>>without as I would be no worse off than I am today.
>>
>>(This seems reminiscent of recent discussion of "layers".)

Just chiming in because I also do not read Reddit (readit?).

As a beginner Emacsite (and programmer) in 2014, I felt I could not work
without line numbers or a rule at 80 columns.  I, too, eventually
settled on fci-mode after some quick and inexperienced testing of other
packages/solutions.  It was nice to be able to preemptively format/break
lines as they grew closer to the rule, without having to wait for 80
columns to be exceeded before this was visually indicated, for example.

Since then, I have dispensed with both features because of performance
and compatibility issues like the ones already mentioned, and I have
become accustomed to their absence and a more minimalistic (less
maximalistic?) setup.

Nevertheless, I was very happy to see the addition of
display-line-numbers (thanks Eli!), and I would also welcome some sort
of native column indication like that of fci-mode, because these have
been popular editor features in my own past experience and that of my
peers.

Having said that, I appreciate that the design and implementation of
this will be non-trivial, as there are many decisions to be made and
circumstances/options to be supported.

Thanks,

-- 
Basil