EMACS :: linum-mode and size of font (unreadable line numbers)

Question

When using linum-mode in emacs and when increase font by Mx text-scale-increase , there is the one thing that bothers me. Font for line numbers have same size as reading and don't fit into left-margin on left side of buffer!

1 Normal font-size, OK

2 Increased font-size, no longer readable FUUUUU

---

What I'd really like to have:

When increase/decrease font I want one of these to work

1. then increase/decrease width of left-margin (resp. left-fringe) accordingly

2. then don't change font for left-margin but increase/decrease spacing between line numbers

   Does anybody have some suggestions? Thanks, guys

Answer 1

Have a look at these two links:

1. my question on the same issue
2. my workaround for this issue

It works quite well enough for my needs.

Examples:

1

Answer 2

The easiest, most straightforward solution I've seen is to set the line numbers to a fixed height. This can be accomplished easily, in accordance with user78810 's answer: https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/29786/font-size-issues-with-emacs-in-linum-mode/146781#146781

To wit, add the following line in your emacs config (or to your dotspacemacs/user-config function, if you're using spacemacs):

(eval-after-load "linum"
  '(set-face-attribute 'linum nil :height 100))

Answer 3

M-x customize-face [RETURN] linum-mode

Answer 4

I think I can fix that problem with the following code:

(require 'linum)
(defun linum-update-window-scale-fix (win)
  "fix linum for scaled text"
  (set-window-margins win
          (ceiling (* (if (boundp 'text-scale-mode-step)
                  (expt text-scale-mode-step
                    text-scale-mode-amount) 1)
              (if (car (window-margins))
                  (car (window-margins)) 1)
              ))))
(advice-add #'linum-update-window :after #'linum-update-window-scale-fix)

It seems to work, at least with 24.5.

Answer 5

I would comment on the solution based on customize-face if I could. It works well for me. The actual face is linum rather than linum-mode , at least in my emacs-24.3.1 . In the customization buffer, I clicked on "Show all attributes" and then set the face height to 100 tenths of a point. If a fixed-size face for the line numbers is acceptable to you (as it is to me) the solution based on customize-face is straightforward.

Answer 6

You can disable linum-mode and use display-line-numbers-mode instead which is part of Emacs since version 26 and scales well when increasing font size.

Eg your config can look like:

;; (global-linum-mode 1)
(global-display-line-numbers-mode)