Re: Making windows have same number of columns

[Stephen Berman]

On Thu, 26 Nov 2020 20:30:46 +0100 daniela-spit@gmx.it wrote:

>> Sent: Thursday, November 26, 2020 at 8:21 PM
>> From: "Stephen Berman" <stephen.berman@gmx.net>
>> To: daniela-spit@gmx.it
>> Cc: "Help Gnu Emacs" <help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org>
>> Subject: Re: Making windows have same number of columns
>>
>> On Thu, 26 Nov 2020 20:01:24 +0100 daniela-spit@gmx.it wrote:
>>
>> >> Sent: Thursday, November 26, 2020 at 7:55 PM
>> >> From: "Stephen Berman" <stephen.berman@gmx.net>
>> >> To: daniela-spit@gmx.it
>> >> Cc: "Help Gnu Emacs" <help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org>
>> >> Subject: Re: Making windows have same number of columns
>> >>
>> >> On Thu, 26 Nov 2020 19:26:39 +0100 daniela-spit@gmx.it wrote:
>> >>
>> >> > Is there a command to make zoom in and out a window to a specific
>> >> > number of columns?
>> >>
>> >> If you mean widen or narrow the selected window, there's
>> >> enlarge-window-horizontally and shrink-window-horizontally, bound
>> >> respectively to `C-x }' and `C-x {'.  They both take a numeric prefix
>> >> argument, so e.g. `C-u 10 C-x }' widens the selected window by 10
>> >> columns.
>> >
>> > I would like that the window stays the same size, but with the size
>> > of the text in the window to be such that the window displays a specific
>> > number of columns.
>>
>> I'm not aware of any command or function in Emacs that adjusts text size
>> according to number of columns.  You've mentioned zooming in and out, by
>> which I assume you mean either `C-x C-+' and `C-x C-' or the
>> corresponding mouse binding <C-mouse-4> (i.e., holding down the Control
>> key while scrolling the mouse wheel).  But that command is
>> text-scale-adjust, which actually changes the height of the font, and
>> correspondingly the width, but AFAIK you cannot make it adjust the font
>> size by a specific number of columns.
>
> Yes, but when you use the scroll wheel you have no real control, one wheel
> scroll down could get the text too small.  I would like a way that stops
> me fidgeting with the controls and lets me do what I want with simply
> pressing a key sequence.

As noted, you can use the key sequences `C-x C-+' and `C-x C-' instead
of the mouse scroll wheel.

On Thu, 26 Nov 2020 20:33:32 +0100 daniela-spit@gmx.it wrote:

> No, you can't.  But that not what I am after.  What I need is 
> text-scale-adjust
> that gets as close as possible to fitting n characters, 55 say.

You can try customizing text-scale-mode-step to a smaller value, though
there's not a great deal of leeway, since its default value is 1.2 and
it has to be >1.0 to have an effect.  You might try 1.1 or even a bit
less and see if that gives you more control.

Steve Berman