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Date: Thu, 13 Feb 1997 18:20:06 -0800
Message-Id: <199702140220.SAA06783@xemacs.eng.sun.com>
From: Martin Buchholz <mrb@Eng.Sun.COM>
To: Kyle Jones <kyle_jones@wonderworks.com>
Cc: xemacs-beta@xemacs.org
Subject: geometry problems
In-Reply-To: <QQccix13347.199702102359@crystal.WonderWorks.COM>
References: <199702102309.PAA18620@lungo>
	<QQccix13347.199702102359@crystal.WonderWorks.COM>
Reply-To: Martin Buchholz <mrb@Eng.Sun.COM>
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>>>>> "Kyle" == Kyle Jones <kyle_jones@wonderworks.com> writes:

Kyle> Didn't we abandon the geometry problems as hopeless back in the
Kyle> 19.12 beta days?  Something about widgets stealing space from the
Kyle> text windows.  It's routine for my window manager and XEmacs to
Kyle> disagree about the frame size.  I just ignore it now or do C-x 5
Kyle> 2 to get a proper sized frame.  Do we care again?

In a world of variable width fonts, and strange widgets that appear
out of nowhere, specifying frame sizes by character dimensions is
making less and less sense.  (For example, XEmacs has no way of
knowing whether an XIM status area will get added to the bottom of the
frame during frame initialization)

Perhaps we should have multiple possible units for geometry
specifications:

characters (default) for tty's and backward compatibility.
pixels
percentage of screen real estate.

I like the third option (but it certainly seems non-standard).  What
could be more intuitive than specifying

(make-frame '(top% 0 left%  0 width% 50 height% 100))
(make-frame '(top% 0 left% 50 width% 50 height% 100))

to nicely tile the display with 2 side-by-side frames?  I know people
who do elaborate trial and error geometry frobbing before coming up
with the appropriate (make-frame) incantation.

It might also be intuitive to have 

(make-frame '(height 50 width 80))

allocate enough extra space to guarantee that 50 rows of 80 column
text could be displayed in the default face, even with the various
widgets, modeline, and minibuffer added, but this is hard and not
backward-compatible, and so impractical.

Martin

