[O] Links in tables: could the plain text also look good?

[Oleh]

Hi all,

I don't know if this issue has been raised before (it's a bit
difficult to google it).

I was just committing a single line change to an org-mode table into
git, and the diff isn't good at all: the whole table appears to have
changed. Well, not really - just a few spaces were added on each table
line because the single new line caused a need to re-align the whole
table.

So I'm thinking: if org-mode uses overlays for links to make some of
the real text invisible, why not keep the plain text aligned and use
the overlays to align the fontified text?

Having a good-looking plain text is an achievement in itself, but
using an smart allocation strategy (like std::vector growth) to add
more spaces than needed each time a column grows, would alleviate the
diff problem, i.e. the diff would show only a single line change most
of the time a line is added or removed.

I'd like some feedback on whether:

- it's done already and I just haven't enabled this behavior
- it can't be done because of some complex issue
- it can be done, but just isn't a priority

In the third case maybe some pointers on where to start implementing
would help.

regards,
Oleh