Re: [PATCH] lisp/bookmark.el: make bookmark-fontify nil by default

[Adam Porter]

Stefan Kangas <stefan@marxist.se> writes:

> [That was in May.]
>
> Lars Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org> writes:
>
>> Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:
>>
>> > Please don't make this change until you hear from Lars, who examined
>> > the original patch and decided to install it.  It doesn't get more
>> > "considerate" than that.
>>
>> It does seem to be an unexpectedly (to me, at least) controversial
>> change, so perhaps it should be tweaked.  For instance, using fringe
>> markers (on frames that support that) instead of highlighting the entire
>> line, or something else that isn't that stark.
>
> This discussion sort of fizzled out with everyone, as far as I can
> tell, mostly agreeing that a fringe marker or similar might be better
> for the default behaviour.  On master, bookmark-fontify is still t,
> and the highlighting is still done by changing the background colour.
>
> In general, I think we are sometimes too cautious with turning on
> so-called "bells and whistles", so I'm actually in one sense happy to
> see that a useful new feature is enabled by default.  Yet I'm a little
> surprised that this particular feature happened to pass the bar.
>
> I personally find that highlighting the entire line is fairly
> distracting, and I'm concerned that this is not a good new default
> behavior.  If I'm wrong, and long-time users of bookmark.el thinks
> this change is great, then that's fine of course.  But just in case
> I'm right, perhaps we could wait with setting the default to t until
> Emacs 29?  That way we have a chance to wait for the new less
> intrusive fringe marker feature, which sounds harder to have many
> reservations about.
>
> WDYT?

FWIW, I'm against enabling this feature by default.  In my testing with
Emacs 28, it's been distracting and jarring.

This is especially so for me, having written a couple of packages that
use bookmark records internally and `bookmark-jump' to go to them,
Burly.el and Dogears.el.  When I jump to or "open" a bookmark made with
Burly, the highlighted line isn't generally useful or meaningful.  It
could be in Dogears, but I'd rather enable the feature in that package's
code or its bookmark records rather than universally.

(That's another issue, and forgive me if I haven't seen it mentioned
before: could this setting be controlled by a setting inside a bookmark
record?  That could be very useful, because it could be enabled just for
ones for which highlighting the line would be meaningful.)

Anyway, maybe I could let-bind `bookmark-fontify' to nil around my calls
to `bookmark-jump', but it still seems like an awkward, unexpected
default.  I can imagine seeing many questions asking something like, "I
upgraded to Emacs 28 and something in my config broke.  What are these
yellow lines in my buffers?"

I wouldn't object as much to a fringe marker being enabled by default,
although I would still wonder if it's a good default.