A couple of weeks ago, a change to compile.el introduced an overlay arrow into buffers created by compile.el: the overlay arrow now marks the current line in the compilation buffer. (Here, ``current line'' means the line whose locus is displayed in the other window; next-error and mouse-1 change that line.)
At least on a text terminal, this feature is problematic. First, suppose that "M-x compile" produced the following *compilation* buffer (I indent the buffer contents 2 columns to the right to make it stand out): -*- mode: compilation; default-directory: "~/" -*- gcc -Wall -O -c tfwd.c tfwd.c: In function `foo': tfwd.c:5: warning: implicit declaration of function `bar' tfwd.c: At top level: tfwd.c:11: warning: type mismatch with previous implicit declaration tfwd.c:5: warning: previous implicit declaration of `bar' tfwd.c:11: warning: `bar' was previously implicitly declared to return `int' tfwd.c: In function `bar': tfwd.c:13: warning: implicit declaration of function `callme' tfwd.c: At top level: tfwd.c:4: warning: `foo' defined but not used Compilation finished at Sun Apr 24 06:01:25 Now, if I type "C-x `", the window that displays the compilation buffer looks like this: =>wd.c:5: warning: implicit declaration of function `bar' tfwd.c: At top level: tfwd.c:11: warning: type mismatch with previous implicit declaration tfwd.c:5: warning: previous implicit declaration of `bar' tfwd.c:11: warning: `bar' was previously implicitly declared to return `int' tfwd.c: In function `bar': tfwd.c:13: warning: implicit declaration of function `callme' tfwd.c: At top level: tfwd.c:4: warning: `foo' defined but not used Compilation finished at Sun Apr 24 06:01:25 Notice the overlay arrow that covered part of the file name: this is a bug, IMHO. If we want to have an arrow pointing out the current line, we should indent the buffer text to the right as many columns as the arrow string takes. Moreover, next-error scrolls the display to keep the current line at the top of the window. I think it's a bit silly to mark the with an arrow a line that is always at the top of its window; such an arrow might make sense if we do not scroll the window except when the current line is no longer visible. Perhaps we need a user option to control these two features (scrolling and arrow) in a way that would by default prevent scrolling when the arrow is used to show the current line. Also, the arrow feature is not customizable. What about users who will dislike it and would wish to turn it off? Finally, I don't really understand why new features such as this one get installed while we are in a feature freeze. At the very least, it should have been discussed (such a discussion could also lead to better design decisions wrt scrolling). However, I couldn't find anything related in emacs-devel archives (sorry if I missed something). _______________________________________________ Emacs-devel mailing list Emacs-devel@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/emacs-devel
