Re: Proportional fonts are problematic

* Jan T. Kim (2004-11-01) writes:

> I seriously doubt, though, that proportional fonts can improve readability
> of any type of source. The Emacs 21 manual says (in the subsection on "Using
> Multiple Typefaces):
>
>     Emacs 21 can correctly display variable-width fonts, but Emacs 
>     commands that calculate width and indentation do not know how to
>     calculate variable widths. This can sometimes lead to incorrect
>     results when you use variable-width fonts. In particular, indentation
>     commands can give inconsistent results, so we recommend you avoid
>     variable-width fonts for editing program source code. Filling will
>     sometimes make lines too long or too short. We plan to address these
>     issues in future Emacs versions.
>
> Personally, I have yet to see any case where readability of source is
> truly improved by the use of proportional fonts. Having had to mark
> programs printed out by students for several years, I've seen my share
> of such attempts.

Do you mean printouts which are typeset solely in a proportional font?
If yes, you cannot compare this to what AUCTeX does.  AUCTeX advises
Emacs to _only_ render the arguments of sectioning commands with a
proportional font, not the whole source code.

> Anyway, in the light of the quotation from the Emacs manual above,
> I can only re-emphasize that making the use of proportional fonts in
> AucTeX the default is, at best, premature.

The reason to change the appearance of sectioning commands in the
source code was to make them stand out.  A user should be able to find
them more easily while scrolling/navigating through the buffer.
Rendering them in a different color, bold or italic is not enough to
achieve this goal.  So you are left, for example, with increasing the
size.  Now what do think happens when the size of a font is increased
in a grid defined by the letters of the monospaced base font?  You
will get exactly the effect described in the quote of the Emacs
manual.  That means it is not the proportional font which is a problem
but the change in size.

An enlarged monospaced font will typically occupy more horizontal
space than a proportional font of the same size.  That means by using
a proportional font, the problems arising by the change in size are
mitigated to a certain extent.

Other reasons you want to have a proportional font are that it is more
consistent with other modes, like emacs-wiki-mode, info-mode or
custom-mode, that proportional fonts tend to be more readable compared
to monospaced fonts (although I also dislike them for the body) and
that enlarged proportional fonts are more appealing to the eye than
enlarged monospaced fonts.

Anyway, I don't understand your problem.  As you already know, there
is a simple switch to get rid of the enlarged proportional font.  Just
use it.

--

-- 
Ralf