Re: Customizing the fringe bitmaps

[Kim F. Storm]

Eli Zaretskii <address@hidden> writes:

> > One option is to load the bitmap from a (pbm) file.
> > 
> > Another option would be to let the user draw the bitmap like this:
> 
> How about both?

Sure, that would be best.

> 
> > The major problem with this approach is that it isn't obvious (to me)
> > how to do this through Customize.
> 
> Hmm.. couldn't you let the user choose either a bitmap file or a list
> of strings?

Of course!  A simple :choice it seems.

Looking at the code (in xterm.c), I think that the current
implementation isn't really optimal as it regenerates the pixmap for
every position in the fringe.  On the other hand supports my second
proposal extremely well, as I can freely update the bitmap data and
have them drawn on next refresh.

  /* Draw the bitmap.  I believe these small pixmaps can be cached
     by the server.  */
  face = FACE_FROM_ID (f, BITMAP_AREA_FACE_ID);
  pixmap = XCreatePixmapFromBitmapData (display, window, bits, wd, h,
                                        face->foreground,
                                        face->background, depth);
  XCopyArea (display, pixmap, window, gc, 0, 0, wd, h, x, y + dy);
  XFreePixmap (display, pixmap);
  XSetClipMask (display, gc, None);

Now, would I read the bitmap from a file every time as well (that would
be the simplest solution), or should I "bite the apple" and store the 
pixmaps in global variables? Or maybe in the dpy structure?

In any case, I don't understand the comment about caching those pixmaps.
How can it cache something which is explicitly freed?

Oh, and looking at the w32term.c file, I see that I'll have to
duplicate the efforts there.