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

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>
> Cc: larsi@gnus.org,  emacs-devel@gnu.org
> Date: Thu, 15 Oct 2020 14:31:43 -0400
> 
>     (put-text-property (1- END) END 'relative-end-position (list START 50))
> 
> could mean something like "make sure that END ends up exactly 50 pixels
> more to the right than the horizontal pixel position of START".
> 
> This way, it could be used for indentation relative to some position
> START in some previous line.

So you now expect the display engine to look back at previous lines,
not just previous glyphs on the same screen line?  That's against the
heart of the design of the display code: it is required to be able to
start at any point in the buffer text, and go from there forward one
buffer position at a time.  The need to go back sometimes is one
reason why displaying long lines brings Emacs to its knees.

> Sadly, this email format does not include any notion of margin, so
> I can't include the simple&elegant implementation of that feature here.

Looking forward to seeing that implementation soon in a Git repository
near me.