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From: inc@tc.fluke.COM (Gary Benson)
Newsgroups: comp.emacs,gnu.emacs
Subject: Re: line numbers in emacs
Message-ID: <6831@fluke.COM>
Date: 3 Feb 89 16:31:32 GMT
References: <22@euteal.UUCP> <6999@killer.DALLAS.TX.US>
Sender: news@tc.fluke.COM
Organization: John Fluke Mfg. Co., Inc., Everett, WA
Lines: 25

Me too! Me too!  I have long wanted a line number indicator in emacs. We
have an indication of percent, but that is precious little use if you don't
know how big the file is! For example, right now my status line is
indicating "53%". So what? I can't see the whole file, so all I know is that
I'm about halfway in; and now (2 lines later) the line reads 57% it must be
"kind of small". I HATE GUESSWORK!!

What I'd *really* like on the status line is:

              Line 101 of 3745 (3%)

That gives me not only real numbers to use for estimating numbers when I use
"goto-line", and "goto-percent", it also gives me enough information to know
where I am in a document I may not have created. Even some I *did* create, I
may forget how big they are after not seeing them for 6 or 8 months. These
things happen.

While writing this message, I also noticed that the particular incantation
of emacs I am using only updates the percentage on the status line when I
type a character! Not when I go forward and backward...anyone have any idea
how much performance would suffer if I had those operations also update the
status line?

Gary Benson
inc@tc.fluke.COM