Emacs 21 font issues and manual window manipulation.

[Kevin A. Burton]

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I have been playing with Emacs 21 and some of its low level functions for
manipulating X 'objects'.

It seems to me that things are currently broken and I have no API to really do
what I want.

So for example.

I have been playing with the ability have code 'sensing' functionality within
Emacs.  Basically this would help the user navigate an API which they are
unfamiliar with by using tool-tips.  This would be similar to MS intellisense or
any of the other code completion technologies.

So basically if you are writing some lisp code and you typed:

'(find-file '

You would see a tooltip (at the right time) that displayed something like:

'find-file is an interactive compiled Lisp function in `files'.
(find-file FILENAME &optional WILDCARDS)'
<snip>

This work in theory but there is no way for me to get an x-offset and y-offset
for the tooltip because Emacs doesn't provide any way for me to find the
x-offset and y-offset for the pointer.  The only way I can get the location of
the pointer is by number of characters (which doesn't help me out).

I also can't calculate this information using font widths now due to our use of
dynamic fonts.  Even if this weren't an issue we would still have the problem of
the tool-bar, fringe, glyphs, and scroll-bar getting in the way.  

This pattern seems to be in a lot of places.  AKA there is no way to set the
frame width based on pixels.  The only way to set the frame width is to use
characters.  

Does this bother anyone else?  Am I missing something?  Is this fixed in GNU
Emacsen later than 21.0.106.1?

PS.  Is this best place to discuss development issues?

Kevin

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Kevin A. Burton address@hidden, address@hidden, address@hidden )
  Location: San Francisco, CA Cell: 415-595-9965 URL: http://relativity.yi.org 

Yes I know my enemies, they're the teachers who taught me to fight me;
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