Subject: bug#56820: outline-minor-mode replacing the first character with an arrow

From: Lars Ingebrigtsen <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 08 Sep 2022 14:01:54 +0200

Jim Porter <[email-masked]> writes:

>> This is an interesting question.  I tried to search how outlines
>> look
>> in other IDEs, and found such a screenshot for VSCode.
>> IIUC, here the first column with a red circle for a breakpoint
>> corresponds to Emacs fringes, the second column with line numbers
>> is the same as display-line-numbers-mode, and the third column is
>> for outline arrows.

Hm, interesting...  But having the outline arrows in a third column
(outside the text area) still doesn't let people use the keyboard on the
icons, so from that point of view, just using the fringe isn't any worse.

> This is a good example of a potential conflict with putting the
> outline buttons in the fringe: line 10 has both an outline arrow *and*
> a breakpoint.

But that's a good point.

Could we envision "blending" fringe markers?  They're pretty primitive,
so that's probably difficult to achieve.

In general, though, it'd be great if fringe markers could be more
normal.  That is, if we could display general images in that area,
instead of just the monocolour things, defined awkwardly, that we have
today.