Subject: bug#5054: 23.1.50; buffer-menu truncated fields

From: Juri Linkov <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 04 Jan 2010 19:28:57 +0200

>> mr> Customizing the group `buffer-menu' gives you a buffer including the
>> mr> option `Buffer-menu-buffer+size-width' which is probably the one you
>> mr> want to tweak here.
>>
>> maybe there should be "you can customize this group" visible to the
>> user so he can learn that.
>
> A pushable button similar to the one you can find for customizable
> options.  That would be reasonable I think.  Juri, what do you think?

I think that instead of manually adding a button, we should improve
the Help system to automatically deduce additional useful information.
For example, `list-buffers' is a command from the package `buff-menu'
that contains the group `Buffer-menu', so we could automatically
add information about this to the help output of `list-buffers'.

Maybe this is not very reliable for the case when a package has more
than one group.  Then a solution would be to not deduce information,
but to add more reliable links: from every command add a link to the
information about the package it belongs to, and on the page with the
package information list all groups with customizable variables.

>> But I want to use the same .emacs file with many different terminal
>> sizes. Why can't there be a setting 'maximum or 'current-window-width or
>> something?
>
> 'maximum should be possible without greater problems.
>
> 'current-window-width is a wishlist item: We could reserve float values
> between 0 and 1 for specifying an appropriate fraction of the window
> width for the width of name+size fields.  The program would have to
> recalculate the new actual width (in `window-configuration-change-hook')
> every time the size of the Buffer Menu window changes.

I propose to add the same options to `Buffer-menu-buffer+size-width' as
`Man-width' currently has.  It fits the output width to the window width,
and `list-buffers' could do the same.

> We could also show the full name of the current entry in a tooltip (when
> the mouse is over it) and/or in the echo area.

This is already implemented.  There is a tooltip for long names.

> And finally we could split a window like the Buffer Menu's one into as
> many subwindows as there are fields and allow the use to drag vertical
> dividers between the various fields in order to reveal hidden
> information.  Currently such an approach would work iff all fields used
> the same font size.

Displaying the buffer list in a table would be an ideal solution.
I think it's better to implement that by allowing dragging a handle
in the header line, and redrawing the buffer accordingly.

-- 
Juri Linkov
http://www.jurta.org/emacs/