Subject: bug#13473: 24.3.50; Display Tables doc bug

From: Stephen Berman <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 14 Feb 2018 14:33:18 +0100

On Tue, 13 Feb 2018 20:18:41 -0500 Noam Postavsky <[email-masked]> wrote:

> Stephen Berman <[email-masked]> writes:
>
>>   The glyph used to draw the border between side-by-side windows (the
>>   default is @samp{|}).  @xref{Splitting Windows}.  This takes effect only
>>   when there are no scroll bars; if scroll bars are supported and in use,
>> ! a scroll bar separates the two windows.  On graphical terminals, Emacs
>> ! uses a thin line to indicate the border, so the display table has no
>> ! effect.
>>   @end table
>
> If it's only effective on a tty display, then is the scroll bar
> reference irrelevant?  AFAIK, there are never scroll bars on a tty
> display anyway.

I think that's right, so the above is misleading (with or without the
change).  I guess it's sufficient just to say "On graphical terminals,
this has no effect."[1] But maybe it would be helpful to say why it has
no effect (even though you see it when you use a graphical display):

diff --git a/doc/lispref/display.texi b/doc/lispref/display.texi
index fbf943a08c..81084d7c06 100644
--- a/doc/lispref/display.texi
+++ b/doc/lispref/display.texi
@@ -6988,9 +6988,10 @@ Display Tables
 
 @item 5
 The glyph used to draw the border between side-by-side windows (the
-default is @samp{|}).  @xref{Splitting Windows}.  This takes effect only
-when there are no scroll bars; if scroll bars are supported and in use,
-a scroll bar separates the two windows.
+default is @samp{|}).  @xref{Splitting Windows}.  On graphical
+terminals, this has no effect: if scroll bars are in use, a scroll bar
+separates the two windows, and if scroll bars are not in use, the
+border is a thin unbroken line.
 @end table
 
   For example, here is how to construct a display table that mimics

Steve Berman

Footnotes:
[1]  At least not on GTK+ builds.  Someone should check other toolkits
     and non-toolkit builds (I currently can't readily do that), though
     it seems unlikely they would differ on this.