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My Emacs eye candy

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Re: My Emacs eye candy

#71

Post by noctuid »

illiarian wrote: post #29
femiagbabiaka wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The extensibility and customizability of Emacs typically means that bad UX is user error. There is a barrier to entry, but if you don't want to go past that, it's no big deal. I'm not sure that's the editor's fault though.

If you need to overcome a barrier and extend/customize to reach a good UX, that is the program's fault (applies to any program, not just emacs)

Customizability is Emacs' selling point. A higher level of extensibility necessary means a higher learning curve. I'd call it a learning curve rather than "barrier": it's certainly not difficult to make Emacs look good. Most people don't care how Emacs behaves OOTB because they want to customize every aspect of it. You might say it should look or behave better by default, but I'd rather the base stay consistent and simple (it fits the use case better). There are plenty of starter kits/distros that look good OOTB for people who want a better default experience.

Re: My Emacs eye candy

#72

Post by noctuid »

illiarian wrote: post #35
usr1106 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think good UX is a universal concept. People have different preferences. On my desktop I don't want click to type. But still many seem to prefer just that. I want a trackpoint, many are happy with touchpads. (Of course some implementations can be classified as just bad UX...)

> I don't think good UX is a universal concept. There are some more-or-less objective criteria we can apply. From "how many actions it takes to achieve something" to accessibility.

> how many actions it takes to achieve something

This is not really objective because you also have to take into consideration how intuitive/simple the UX is. Given 100 related actions, clicking through a logically grouped nested menu or multiple pages to do something is going to require more steps but be something anyone can do. Memorizing and using keyboard shortcuts for all those actions will be more efficient, but isn't something someone could immediately do. There is of course an in-between where you can have menus to display available keyboard shortcuts, but some (most?) people will still prefer a GUI/mouse-based approach. There is no one-size-fits-all approach.

Re: My Emacs eye candy

#73

Post by amake »

I would probably be considered an Emacs power user: I have used it for years as my daily driver for professional programming in many languages; I have an extensive custom config; I have published several non-trivial packages.

But I still had no idea that zones existed until today.

Re: My Emacs eye candy

#75

Post by eldenring »

vvillena wrote: post #57
lenkite wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whats the difference between Doom emacs and spacemacs ?

Both are very opinionated frameworks. Basically, they establish a convention for dealing with packages and custom config code, and build from there. With Spacemacs, the expected default is to use Vim-style editing, with the addition of the Space key (hence the name) to access all of Emacs functionality. It's quite user-friendly and very discoverable. And it's still Emacs, so it offers a lot of customization. Doom Ema…

Doom is the same. It uses evil mode by default and SPC as the default leader key.

Also in my experience it is a lot faster.

Re: My Emacs eye candy

#76

Post by vvillena »

eldenring wrote: post #75
vvillena wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both are very opinionated frameworks. Basically, they establish a convention for dealing with packages and custom config code, and build from there. With Spacemacs, the expected default is to use Vim-style editing, with the addition of the Space key (hence the name) to access all of Emacs functionality. It's quite user-friendly and very discoverable. And it's still Emacs, so it offers a lot of customization. Doom Ema…

Doom is the same. It uses evil mode by default and SPC as the default leader key. Also in my experience it is a lot faster.

Let me clarify that Doom Emacs is not "same as Spacemacs, but faster". This is probably one of the biggest misunderstandings about these two Emacs frameworks.

You can end up with a similar feature set using any of the two, and yes, Doom Emacs will probably be a bit faster, but they are not entirely equal. The user experience is different, one easy example is that while using SPC as a leader key is a feature in both, the keymaps are quite different.

My recommendation would be to try them both: they are easy to install, and uninstallation is as simple as removing the Emacs config in your user directory.

Re: My Emacs eye candy

#77

Post by noir_lord »

arnsholt wrote: post #70
llasse wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Especially regarding org mode I am always surprised about how most users use so little typography. Using the same settings for writing and coding seems counterintuitive yet most org modes I see in screenshots look pretty code-editorisch to me, and the styling options you mentioned are pretty much the only ones I know (missing Olivietti mode [1]) Most other note taking apps surpass here… [1] https://github.com/rnkn/ol…

As a group, programmers do seem quite attached to monospaced fonts. For my IDE I have actually gone (I think) even further than you: I use a proportional (serif even!) font for all my programming, not just prose writing. It took a bit of getting used to, but now I've come to much prefer it over monospaced fonts.

Inverse for me, I use mono in places people traditionally use proportional fonts - after literal decades of looking at monospaced text (right back to DOS) it's just as easy for me to grok.

Re: My Emacs eye candy

#78

Post by alwaysbeconsing »

thom wrote: post #47

I’ve turned off nearly everything in my Emacs. Fullscreen, no scrollbars, minimal frame borders, modeline hidden. My only sadness is that you can’t completely reclaim the echo area when it’s not in use. But one thing this has always helped me ensure is that if I want something, I learn how to go there, directly. No scrolling around and rummaging.

I haven't tried it recently, so it's quite possible it's broken but this package has an autohide behavior for the echo area: https://github.com/honmaple/emacs-maple-echoarea You might be able to adapt it.

Re: My Emacs eye candy

#79

Post by nvy »

sph wrote: post #53
nvy wrote: post #11

Shout out to `parrot-mode` for emacs[0]! My life would be incomplete without a dank parrot in my modeline. [0] https://github.com/dp12/parrot

Now make it appear only when you're compiling something. Would be great when working on a C++ project.

That would be pretty neat. I bet the author takes feature requests.

Re: My Emacs eye candy

#80

Post by ashton314 »

llasse wrote: post #43
tincholio wrote: post #26

Without meaning any offense to the OP, I think this is a pretty low bar for Emacs eye-candy... Nicolas Rougier's "Nano Emacs" [0], or his previous "Elegant Emacs" [1] are better examples. You can also get pretty far using variable-pitch mode for mixing fonts (for example in org-mode [2]). [0]: https://github.com/rougier/nano-emacs [1]: https://github.com/rougier/elegant-emacs [2]: https://github.com/minad/org-modern

Especially regarding org mode I am always surprised about how most users use so little typography. Using the same settings for writing and coding seems counterintuitive yet most org modes I see in screenshots look pretty code-editorisch to me, and the styling options you mentioned are pretty much the only ones I know (missing Olivietti mode [1]) Most other note taking apps surpass here… [1] https://github.com/rnkn/ol…

I like writing in a monospaced font—it helps me focus, and it's what I'm used to. That said, I have found delight in the ability to customize certain modes to use different fonts.

I keep two fonts: a "reader" font and a "normal" font: normal is all fixed-width, while reader has longer characters for e.g. em-dashes and arrows.

I have a custom Iosevka build [1] that I use to make these. (The only difference is the `spacing` option: full-fixed-width is "term", while the reader version is "normal"—confusing, no?) I make Emacs use one or the other with a little config. [2]

[1]: https://sr.ht/~ashton314/iosevka-output/

[2]: https://paste.sr.ht/~ashton314/449022e1f17b3e506f55904941ad2...

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