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Blinking Cursor Turns 54

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Re: Blinking Cursor Turns 54

#11

Post by tpmx »

dang wrote: post #6
tpmx wrote: post #3

I've been using Emacs since 1996. One of the many reasons I like it is the default non-blinking full block cursor. It brings a certain calmness to the editing process. No stress or distraction. It feels so clean. It's interesting how very subtle design decisions like these matter so much.

Is that the default? The cursor in my Emacs blinks and I don't believe I told it to. Edit: M-x blink-cursor-mode FTW - thanks!

Uh, please clarify? :)

I do believe it is the default. Hard to know what's default when you've been carrying over your .emacs for two decades.

Every single fresh install on random throwaway installs I've done has defaulted to a single non-blinking block cursor though.

Re: Blinking Cursor Turns 54

#12

Post by bitwize »

csdvrx wrote: post #4

Interestingly enough, disabling cursor blinks on the intel 950 iGPUs resulted in increased powersaving: https://lwn.net/Articles/317922/ and http://tuxdiary.com/2015/09/29/save-battery-intel-linux/ A few years later, I checked that with powertop when I was using my thinkpad in uni and it was true and measurable! I'm not sure if it's still the case, but it's funny how UI features can tax the power budget in unsuspecte…

Remember when Visual Studio Code consumed 13% of one CPU core to blink the cursor?

Re: Blinking Cursor Turns 54

#13

Post by reaperducer »

newsbinator wrote: post #5
csdvrx wrote: post #4

Interestingly enough, disabling cursor blinks on the intel 950 iGPUs resulted in increased powersaving: https://lwn.net/Articles/317922/ and http://tuxdiary.com/2015/09/29/save-battery-intel-linux/ A few years later, I checked that with powertop when I was using my thinkpad in uni and it was true and measurable! I'm not sure if it's still the case, but it's funny how UI features can tax the power budget in unsuspecte…

And moving your mouse around made Windows 95 faster! https://www.extremetech.com/computing/294907-why-moving-the-...

And moving your mouse around made Windows 95 faster!

Still the case with macOS in Finder. Even on Big Sur running on an M1. I dealt with this over the weekend.

Re: Blinking Cursor Turns 54

#14

Post by a_e_k »

tpmx wrote: post #3

I've been using Emacs since 1996. One of the many reasons I like it is the default non-blinking full block cursor. It brings a certain calmness to the editing process. No stress or distraction. It feels so clean. It's interesting how very subtle design decisions like these matter so much.

Emacs has a lot of cool little touches to the way it blinks the cursor.

blink-cursor-delay (defaults to 0.5 seconds): Keeps the cursor visible and not blinking when you're rapidly navigating around or typing. Most other apps seem to do this sort of thing too, but it's an easy detail to overlook.

blink-cursor-blinks (defaults to 10): Blinks the cursor a certain number of times and then stops blinking.

One way I do customize it is to set blink-cursor-alist to '((t . hollow)). When the cursor blinks it alternates between a full block and the outline of a block so that it never disappears completely.

Re: Blinking Cursor Turns 54

#16

Post by jareklupinski »

chhickman wrote: post #8
newsbinator wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And moving your mouse around made Windows 95 faster! https://www.extremetech.com/computing/294907-why-moving-the-...

You can still observe a related effect to this in Windows 10. Open up any large(ish) file in NotePad++ or most any other editor and place the cursor in the text and drag to the bottom of the screen so it starts scrolling. If you hold the mouse still at that point it will scroll through a couple dozen every half second or so, but if you wag the mouse side to side it will scroll through hundreds at a time in the same s…

every time I use this trick, I think of how running diagonally in some games is faster than running in one direction...

Re: Blinking Cursor Turns 54

#17

Post by morelisp »

tpmx wrote: post #3

I've been using Emacs since 1996. One of the many reasons I like it is the default non-blinking full block cursor. It brings a certain calmness to the editing process. No stress or distraction. It feels so clean. It's interesting how very subtle design decisions like these matter so much.

Emacs does blink by default. On the other hand, it is the only piece of software I know with `blink-cursor-blinks` - which is I think 10 by default, I've reduced it to 3 - so the cursor blinks only a couple times and then stops.

Re: Blinking Cursor Turns 54

#19

Post by gmfawcett »

tpmx wrote: post #11
dang wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that the default? The cursor in my Emacs blinks and I don't believe I told it to. Edit: M-x blink-cursor-mode FTW - thanks!

Uh, please clarify? :) I do believe it is the default. Hard to know what's default when you've been carrying over your .emacs for two decades. Every single fresh install on random throwaway installs I've done has defaulted to a single non-blinking block cursor though.

It's easy -- just run "emacs -q" to bypass all your local config. Default in GUI is a blinking cursor. (Default in terminal is the terminal's own blink default.)

Re: Blinking Cursor Turns 54

#20

Post by jpe90 »

csdvrx wrote: post #4

Interestingly enough, disabling cursor blinks on the intel 950 iGPUs resulted in increased powersaving: https://lwn.net/Articles/317922/ and http://tuxdiary.com/2015/09/29/save-battery-intel-linux/ A few years later, I checked that with powertop when I was using my thinkpad in uni and it was true and measurable! I'm not sure if it's still the case, but it's funny how UI features can tax the power budget in unsuspecte…

“A blinking cursor can have a significant effect on battery life, as such we decided to change the default to non-blinking.”

Sublime Text 4 Update FAQ, May 2021

https://forum.sublimetext.com/t/sublime-text-4-update-faq/58...

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