Emacs 26 added built-in support for line numbers, relative line numbers, and
visual line numbers. Spacemacs supports only absolute and relative, but there is
no way to access the visual mode. It's hard to get around this, since Spacemacs
abstracts line numbers to a reasonably high degree.
Arguably, `visual` is much more useful than `relative` as a display type. Visual
line numbers are like relative line numbers, but only lines that are actually
showing are counted. This means:
1. Hidden lines are not counted. If a large amount of text is folded, the line
numbers won't jump from "10" to "546". This is particularly useful in
buffers like `magit-status`, where a large amount of information is folded
by default.
2. Lines that are wrapped are counted as multiple lines, since they're being
displayed as multiple lines in the editor. Each visual line will be
numbered - unlike `relative`, where the entire thing is numbered... Once.
With standard relative line numbers, you can't actually navigate using the line
numbers in the sidebar as soon as folded or wrapped lines are introduced. Since
this is one of the main use cases for relative line numbers, this is a big
problem.
Visual mode fixes that problem. Every line that's being displayed is labelled.
Numbers always correspond to the actual number of lines you'd need to navigate
to reach that line.
This commit extends Spacemacs' line number interface to provide visual line
number support.
Emacs 26.1 will introduce a new native line numbers feature:
"display-line-numbers". It includes relative line numbers, is faster than
current linum-mode, and doesn't use the margin area (it has its own area). So
yeah, we want to use the new feature when possible.
No changes are required on the user side, except for Emacs 26 users are
recommended to remove nlinum layer from their configuration (if they have
enabled it).
With this change:
- Emacs 26:
- uses display-line-numbers by default.
- linum and linum-relative packages are excluded.
- Emacs 25:
- does NOT use display-line-numbers.
- continues to use linum and linum-relative.
- nlinum layer:
- can still be used as before in Emacs 25.
- is NOT recommended in Emacs 26, but can be used.
- when enabled, excludes display-line-numbers.
Also contains some bug fixes:
Fixes a bug where setting `dostpacemacs-line-numbers` to `t` or `relative`
enabled line numbers in every buffer, instead of only in buffers that derive
from prog-mode and text-mode.
Likewise fixes a bug where specifying `:enabled-for-modes nil` (or not
specifying `:enabled-for-modes` at all) in `dotspacemacs-line-numbers` settings
meant "enable in all modes" instead of "enable in modes derived from prog-mode
or text-mode".
Because of this change, also adds a way for users to enable line numbers
in *all* buffers.
Removes check for special buffer. All our current checks should be enough to
enable line numbers only where it makes sense. Disabling in all special buffers
is not necessary.
This reverts commit 29c78ce841 and all other fixes
that have been made afterwards.
The motivation is that use-package is seen by many as a replacement for
`require`. Is use-package always defer the loading of packages then is breaks
this use case, this does not respect POLA so even if it was making Spacemacs
loading faster (up to 3s faster on some startup on my machine) we just cannot
use it, it would be irresponsible. Spacemacs should be easy to use, loading
performance will come with time but it is not a priority.
To use nlinum + nlinum-relative add the nlinum layer
Note: there are still work to do on nlinum-relative, at some point we
may replace linum by nlinum completely.
