Re: Using proportional (variable-width) fonts in Emacs23

[Xah Lee]

On Mar 28, 9:22 am, Erin Brinkley <erin_brink...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Hi!
>
> I'm using Emacs 23 now and LOVE using proportional fonts! (AKA variable width 
> fonts.) It FINALLY makes Emacs look beautiful, makes text easy to read.
>
> But I discovered a huge problem: the fill and word wrap commands are hard 
> coded to work for monospaced fonts only! For instance the fill-column is 
> based on monospace fonts: if you use a proportional font and set the fill 
> column to what you think is a reasonable number, you'll soon find out that 
> you are WRONG and you get extra whitespace at the end of a line, and words 
> will wrap! The only way out is to set the fill-column to an insanely low 
> number, and that's not a real solution either!
>
> I saw a copy of the old Emacs 21 manual online where it says that yes, you 
> can use variable width fonts but the fill and wrap commands aren't yet set up 
> for it. Something about how they were working on it. I'm curious how that's 
> been going over the years. Is there any support for these fonts in Emacs now? 
> Anyone know of a hack - kludge - tip - workaround I can try in the meantime? 
> I love how this looks but admit to going crazy here with all my documents 
> having these weird wrap problems.
>
> Appreciate the help everyone!

as Eli Z & Tassilo H mentioned, fill-column inserts line break char at
fixed number of chars per line. It's used to reformat computer code or
email that require line breaks. This command isn't designed for visual
wrap as the notion of margin in word processors. What you want is
probably visual-line-mode.

However, i wanted to say that i also use variable-width font all the
time (often even when working in dired or python), and fill-column
still works fine for visual purposes. Not quite sure what you mean
weird wraps...

 Xah