Re: Tick Reduction

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>
> Cc: Emacs developers <emacs-devel@gnu.org>
> Date: Fri, 19 Nov 2021 08:58:11 -0500
> 
> Clearly, we would benefit from a formal markup language (and one which
> includes some way to align text into columns).

AFAIU, markup is generally separate from layout, so aligning text is
not part of what markup is supposed to solve.

> Note that for the column display, I think we actually need an
> extension to the current `space` thingy on the `display` property
> which is able to align columns even without the buffer's data
> telling the redisplay at which precise pixel position it should be
> aligned (instead it should just add space until the columns are
> visually aligned).

This goes against the very basics of how our display engine is
designed: it examines text one character at a time and makes layout
decisions as part of that examination.  What you want would AFAIU
require the display engine perform layout of the entire window above
the line currently being laid out, before the layout of the current
line can be performed.