Emacs and long file names

[Adam Beneschan <adam@irvine.com>]

This isn't really about Ada, but I figure it probably affects readers
of this newsgroup more than many others.

I've been using GNU Emacs for my Ada sources for a long time.
Recently, I needed it on a new machine, so I installed a recent
version of GNU Emacs.  A major annoyance is that the Electric Buffer
List now truncates file names to 20-22 characters; older versions
would try to display the whole file name but truncate some of the
other information.  (I like using an 80-character width.)  This may
not be a problem for a typical C user, but many of the publicly
available Ada packages use file names built from all the ancestor and
child package names, with an .ads or .adb extension (spec/body).  If I
go to the Electric Buffer List to select a buffer, and I've already
loaded both the .ads and .adb files, I can't tell from the list which
is which, and I have to try to guess whether I'm selecting the .ads or
the .adb file.

I asked the Emacs newsgroup whether there was a solution.  There seem
to be some possible lame solutions, which I haven't looked into, but I
also recall someone commenting that I should just switch to using
shorter file names like the rest of the world.  Pretty inane, not just
the idea that I should redo all my own file naming conventions to suit
the editor, but they didn't even consider that I might be using
someone else's package of files and don't have control over the
naming.  Anyway, (1) I figured I'd get more sympathy for my whining on
this newsgroup, plus (2) I thought maybe some other Ada user who had
run into a similar problem had a solution.  If so, I'd appreciate any
thoughts.

                               -- thanks, Adam