Re: How to make Emacs popular again: Use monospaced fonts less

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Lars Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org>
> Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org
> Date: Wed, 14 Oct 2020 06:03:28 +0200
> 
> Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:
> 
> >> >>         (setq mode-line-thing
> >> >>               `(:propertize
> >> >>                 "some-string"
> >> >>                 :min-width 15))
> 
> [...]
> 
> > Then perhaps I didn't understand your suggestion: how would the above
> > be different from what you originally had in mind about :min-width?
> 
> When rendering the mode line, Emacs knows what pixel it started the
> first glyph of each mode line element on, and it knows where it ends, so
> it sounds conceptually sound to add a :min-width spec here (since it can
> just insert some space of the required length at the end).

Yes, this can be done.  But we'd need fort to decide what is the
semantics of this:

  (setq mode-line-thing `(:propertize "%12b" :min-width 10))

IOW, when the format and :min-width contradict, who "wins"?

Or maybe we should re-purpose the WIDTH parameter of such formats to
mean "min-width"?