Subject: Re: bug#44068: 28.0.50; Faulty uses of tabulated-list-format

From: Eli Zaretskii <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 19 Oct 2020 21:43:57 +0300

> From: Stephen Berman <[email-masked]>
> Cc: [email-masked]
> Date: Mon, 19 Oct 2020 20:20:16 +0200
> 
> > Instead of manually fine-tuning each column's width, wouldn't it be
> > better to use the string-trim capabilities that replace excess
> > characters with an ellipsis?
> 
> I'm not sure I understand your suggestion.  If you mean to truncate the
> column label in the header line when displaying the sort indicator,
> e.g. change "Status" to "Sta… ▼", I'm dubious it's worth the effort,
> since most of the problematic cases in the Emacs sources are with the
> final column, where there's always enough space, but due to the
> misleading description in tabulated-list-format's doc string, many modes
> have made it unnecessarily narrow, preventing the display of the sort
> indicator.  So to avoid the final column being labelled e.g. either
> "File" or "Fi… ▼" instead of "File ▼", it is necessary to change the
> width manually anyway.  In other words, the truncation proposal would be
> an addition to manual fine-tuning (for non-final columns), not a
> substitute for it.  Or did you mean something else?

Yes, I meant it as an addition, which will make this issue much more
future proof.  Documentation update is definitely fine (and should
probably go to emacs-27, not to master, right?), and adjusting the
column widths to eliminate the ellipsis is also okay.  I just don't
want us to end with these two and nothing else.