Re: colourising newlines

[Eric S Fraga <e.fraga@ucl.ac.uk>]

Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org> writes:

> Ted Zlatanov <tzz@lifelogs.com> writes:
>
>> Does it?  Maybe you can font-lock it to take N spaces but actually be
>> zero.
>
> I don't think that's possible with Emacs' display engine, but I'd love
> to be wrong on that point.
>
>> I don't know, honestly, but dammit I know what looks good and ragged
>> backgrounds are not it :)
>
> No, it looks quite awkward at present.  Perhaps colourising the newline
> (i.e., extending the colour block up to the right frame end) is the best
> of two not very good options.

What about using an overlay (with appropriate face) instead of
font-locking, as is done by hl-line mode (cf. hl-line.el in emacs 23.2
at least).  This mode overlays a background from the left edge of the
window to the right edge regardless of the number of characters on the
line (i.e. no space padding required) and the code in hl-line-move looks
like it could easily be extended to cover a number of lines instead of
just a single line?

Just a thought from an elisp novice...  so feel free to ignore me (as
many do ;-).

-- 
: Eric S Fraga (GnuPG: 0xC89193D8FFFCF67D) in Emacs 23.2.1 + No Gnus v0.11