RFC: matchup_matchparen_offscreen should not be enabled by default

[igorlfs]

Hello,

The default behavior for matchup_matchparen_offscreen can be confusing. Overriding the statusline is not something that a lot of plugins do. And some statusline plugins may not play very well with it.

I gave try plugin a try a couple of times, but in both I noticed it introduced flickering with my lualine. I thought it was because the % mapping briefly triggered a mode change or something similar, which ended up causing lualine to redraw... As it turns out, for a brief moment, matchup would redraw the statusline and then, right after, lualine would redraw it as well (IIRC it has a time based refresh). This ended up annoying me a little too much, and I gave up on the plugin.

However, a while later, I gave the plugin yet another shot. This time, I was no longer using Lualine and I finally realized that the bug was actually a feature. I proceeded to disable this feature, which solves the problem for me, but I wonder if other people are not falling down a similar path? Well, the lack of issues mentioning this seems to indicate that people are not that bothered by this¹, but still...

I recognize that lualine is partially at blame here. However, I wouldn't have thought this issue came from a feature from matchup if I hadn't given up on lualine. I can't say with a 100% certainty, but I suspect this affects other statusline plugins as well. Which means it's potentially easier to handle on matchup's side.

In addition to that, I know that the plugin is really well established and changing a default now may annoy some folks. So it's also comprehensible to not follow this path.

I have considered an alternative: perhaps this setting should only take effect if the user was not overriding the statusline. And matchup could ship be a function that could be integrated into custom status lines (as to not completely take over the line).

Footnotes

1. There's at least another discussion addressing this problem ↩