The window-width function does not take text scale adjustments into account. This breaks code such as http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/ErcFilling#toc2 which is meant to insert timestamps aligned to the right edge of the window. To reproduce starting from emacs -Q, 1) M-: (window-width) RET ; returns 80 here 2) C-x C-= ; window is now 70 characters wide 3) M-: (window-width) RET ; still returns 80 In GNU Emacs 24.0.91.1 (x86_64-apple-darwin, NS apple-appkit-1038.35) of 2011-10-30 on virtualmac.porkrind.org Windowing system distributor `Apple', version 10.3.1038 configured using `configure '--host=x86_64-apple-darwin' '--build=i686-apple-darwin' '--with-ns' 'build_alias=i686-apple-darwin' 'host_alias=x86_64-apple-darwin' 'CC=gcc -mmacosx-version-min=10.5'' Important settings: value of $LC_ALL: nil value of $LC_COLLATE: nil value of $LC_CTYPE: nil value of $LC_MESSAGES: nil value of $LC_MONETARY: nil value of $LC_NUMERIC: nil value of $LC_TIME: nil value of $LANG: en_US.US-ASCII value of $XMODIFIERS: nil locale-coding-system: us-ascii-unix default enable-multibyte-characters: t Major mode: Lisp Interaction Minor modes in effect: text-scale-mode: t tooltip-mode: t mouse-wheel-mode: t tool-bar-mode: t menu-bar-mode: t file-name-shadow-mode: t global-font-lock-mode: t font-lock-mode: t blink-cursor-mode: t auto-composition-mode: t auto-encryption-mode: t auto-compression-mode: t line-number-mode: t transient-mark-mode: t Recent input: M-x e m a c s - v e r C-x 3 M-: ( w i n d o w - w i d t h ) C-x C-= C-x C-= M-: C-x 1 M-x r e p o r t - e m Recent messages: For information about GNU Emacs and the GNU system, type C-h C-a. GNU Emacs 24.0.91.1 (x86_64-apple-darwin, NS apple-appkit-1038.35) of 2011-10-30 on virtualmac.porkrind.org 37 (#o45, #x25) 37 (#o45, #x25) Load-path shadows: None found. Features: (shadow sort gnus-util mail-extr message format-spec rfc822 mml easymenu mml-sec mm-decode mm-bodies mm-encode mail-parse rfc2231 rfc2047 rfc2045 ietf-drums mm-util mail-prsvr mailabbrev mail-utils gmm-utils mailheader emacsbug face-remap time-date tooltip ediff-hook vc-hooks lisp-float-type mwheel ns-win tool-bar dnd fontset image fringe lisp-mode register page menu-bar rfn-eshadow timer select scroll-bar mouse jit-lock font-lock syntax facemenu font-core frame cham georgian utf-8-lang misc-lang vietnamese tibetan thai tai-viet lao korean japanese hebrew greek romanian slovak czech european ethiopic indian cyrillic chinese case-table epa-hook jka-cmpr-hook help simple abbrev minibuffer loaddefs button faces cus-face files text-properties overlay sha1 md5 base64 format env code-pages mule custom widget hashtable-print-readable backquote make-network-process ns multi-tty emacs)