Re: Face (X-Face?)

[Simon Josefsson <jas@extundo.com>]

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

> Michael Livshin <usenet@cmm.kakpryg.net> writes:
>
>> I'd like to ask Gnus to render those pictures on the right, so that
>> articles would look like so:
>>
>> +-------------------------------------------------------+
>> | <header...................>                           |
>> | <header...................>                   <X-face>|
>> | <header...................>                           |
>> | ------------------------------------------------------|
>> |  <body..........................................>     |
>> +-------------------------------------------------------+
>
> Unless the X/Emacs rendering system has changed lately, that's
> actually very difficult to do.  I think the only way to do that is to
> insert one space at a time and query Emacs how many pixels we now
> have left.  When you're far enough to the right, you insert the face. 

Using the space-width it becomes a little easier (insert one space
with the space-width property and then the face, then increase the
space-width length until it can't be increased further without
wrapping the line), but I think it is impossible to get the above
because an image cannot occupy several lines as far as I know.

So it is only possible to get the following:

 +-------------------------------------------------------+
 | <header...................>                   <X-face>|
 |                                               <X-face>|
 |                                               <X-face>|
 | <header...................>                           |
 | <header...................>                           |
 | ------------------------------------------------------|
 |  <body..........................................>     |
 +-------------------------------------------------------+

Another idea is to make use of multiple emacs buffers for this, i.e.:

 +---------------------------------------------+--------+
 | <header...................>                 |<X-face>|
 | <header...................>                 |<X-face>|
 | <header...................>                 |<X-face>|
 | <header...................>                 |        |
 +---------------------------------------------+--------+
 |  <body.........................................>     |
 +------------------------------------------------------+

If the status bar and scrollbars can be disabled or minimized (which I
believe is the case), I think this could work rather well.

Presumably, the easiest way to implement it would be to simply disable
viewing headers in the current *Article* buffer and then add the two
other buffers with the headers and X-face, like the tree buffer is
added now.  I'm not sure if it is worth the trouble.