Subject: Re: bug#27847: 26.0.50; mode-line-percent-position: line-based instead of char-based (optionally)

From: Dani Moncayo <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 27 Jul 2017 22:44:58 +0200

>> I'd prefer this (those) percentage(s) to be based on the number of
>> _lines_ instead
>
> What do you want to be displayed in that case when line numbers are
> not counted and displayed as "???" ?  Do you want Emacs to count lines
> even though the limits which control that are exceeded?

In cases where line numbers are not counted (I didn't know about such
cases, BTW), I guess Emacs could display "??" as the percentage,
meaning that the value is unknown at that moment.

> Also note that for your feature to be implemented, Emacs needs to
> count lines in the entire buffer each time the buffer is changed, so I
> expect this feature to slow down redisplay.

Maybe this computation could be optimized somehow.  In any case, if
someone implements it and the slow down is observable, it could be
advertised in the manual and/or the docstring of the variable which
enables this feature.

-- 
Dani Moncayo