Subject: Re: Make mode-line number display consistent when both line and col numbers are shown.

From: Eli Zaretskii <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 29 Sep 2017 21:20:46 +0300

> From: Robert Weiner <[email-masked]>
> Date: Fri, 29 Sep 2017 13:45:01 -0400
> Cc: [email-masked], Richard Stallman <[email-masked]>
> 
>  We had "Ln Cn" kind of display in Emacs 21 and before, and we changed
>  that to the current display in Emacs 22.1 (the change itself is from
>  Aug 2002).
> 
> ​Was there any particular rationale for this?

Yes: the "Ln Cn" display was deemed "quite annoying to look at".
Sounds familiar? ;-)

You can read the entire thread here:

  http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2002-08/msg00451.html

(most of it is not about this particular change).

> I offered my rationale for this change above; can't we debate the merits rather than that we changed it long
> ago?

It just sounds strange to me to go back on a change, when no one AFAIR
complained about that change.