Re: Emacs and long file names

[Adam Beneschan <adam@irvine.com>]

On May 24, 7:44 pm, Stephen Leake <stephen_le...@stephe-leake.org>
wrote:
> Simon Wright <si...@pushface.org> writes:
> > I hadn't come across electric-buffer-list before; I use
> > mouse-buffer-menu, bound (not by me) to C-down-mouse-1.
>
> Ah; invoke electric-buffer-list.
>
> A little poking with the elisp debugger, and I found this variable:
>
> Buffer-menu-buffer+size-width is a variable defined in `buff-menu.el'.
> Its value is 26
>
> Documentation:
> How wide to jointly make the buffer name and size columns.
>
> You can customize this variable.

Thanks, that's very helpful.  I'll play around with it a bit more to
see if I can really make this work the way I'd like (ideally, setting
up a key binding that would let me switch this value back and forth if
needed), but I think this is the main answer.

I'll also think about your suggestion to allow myself a wider screen.
I think my reluctance has been a throwback to the old days when a lot
of printouts were only allowed 80 columns, which is itself a throwback
to the number of characters on a Hollerith card.  Here it's 2010 and
my life still revolves around Hollerith cards.  Sigh.......  (Then
again, I'm using a language that refuses to use square or curly
brackets or some other special characters in its syntax because they
weren't available on old punch-card machines.)

On the other hand, I probably won't be doing things Simon's way.  I
kind of like being able to keep my hands in one place, rather than
having to move them to use some sort of rodent-like attachment.  But I
appreciate the input from both of you.

                                        -- Adam