Re: HTML-Info design

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Lars Ingebrigtsen <address@hidden>
> Cc: address@hidden,  address@hidden,  address@hidden,  address@hidden,  
> address@hidden
> Date: Mon, 29 Dec 2014 11:41:59 +0100
> 
> > What's non-pretty with how we do this now?  What features are missing?
> 
> We don't know (before redisplay) how wide a piece of text is, so we
> can't fill the text.  This makes it impossible to use proportional fonts
> in common layouts like
> 
> first column with         second column with
> some flowing text here    some other text
>                           here

Not sure why you say "impossible".  First, to align the right-hand
pane of the text you could use '(space :align-to HPOS)' display spec
after each line of the text on the left-hand pane.

Granted, that might waste some screen real estate, since you would
need to be conservative about the amount of text you put in the
left-hand pane, to avoid overrunning the right-hand pane.  So a
capability to know the display width in advance is indeed desirable.

Fortunately, such a capability already exists, I think: see the
function 'font-get-glyphs'.  Does it solve your problem?  If not, what
API would you like to have?

In any case, I don't think Info manuals use such a layout, at least
not yet, so it's not a show-stopper.