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Blinking Cursor Turns 54

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Re: Blinking Cursor Turns 54

#21

Post by [deleted] »

morelisp wrote: post #17
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.

[deleted]

Re: Blinking Cursor Turns 54

#22

Post by franga2000 »

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…

Yeah people always look at me like I'm crazy when I do that, but it really does work

Re: Blinking Cursor Turns 54

#23

Post by tpmx »

gmfawcett wrote: post #19
tpmx wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

> Default in GUI is a blinking cursor. (Default in terminal is the terminal's own blink default.)

Ah, that probably explains my confusion. Sorry about spreading it.

Re: Blinking Cursor Turns 54

#24

Post by fxtentacle »

jpe90 wrote: post #20
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...

Haha, that's probably an electron app. Or they use a really buggy UI framework. Otherwise, I wouldn't know why updating a 4x8 pixel block would cause a significant amount of power usage. Especially if a 286 could do it no problemo.

Re: Blinking Cursor Turns 54

#26

Post by zamadatix »

fxtentacle wrote: post #24
jpe90 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“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...

Haha, that's probably an electron app. Or they use a really buggy UI framework. Otherwise, I wouldn't know why updating a 4x8 pixel block would cause a significant amount of power usage. Especially if a 286 could do it no problemo.

Sublime is a native C++ app. It uses a minimal custom framework built on top of I think skia which actually mediates the drawing on hardware devices (or the CPU). As described by the articles the power usage comes from causing the hardware to repeatedly exit a low wattage deep idle state to update the UI not to do with the amount of work required to render the update.

This is actually more noticeable for efficient apps than inefficient/bloated apps as the latter don't get as many chances to enter deep idle states in the first place.

Re: Blinking Cursor Turns 54

#27

Post by anon_123g987 »

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.

Blinking can be disabled in RStudio, too, though it's not the default. I know this because RStudio doesn't respect my XFCE settings, where blinking can also be disabled, or the blinking-rate set (almost) OS-wide.

Re: Blinking Cursor Turns 54

#28

Post by jpe90 »

fxtentacle wrote: post #24
jpe90 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“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...

Haha, that's probably an electron app. Or they use a really buggy UI framework. Otherwise, I wouldn't know why updating a 4x8 pixel block would cause a significant amount of power usage. Especially if a 286 could do it no problemo.

It’s a native c++ app

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2822114

Re: Blinking Cursor Turns 54

#29

Post by badRNG »

jareklupinski wrote: post #16
chhickman wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

I think that's just because those games are written poorly and don't account for the differences in moving diagonally. If you are moving on a grid, moving forward one tile moves you the length of a tile. Moving diagonally one tile moves you sqrt(2) ~1.4 tile lengths.

Re: Blinking Cursor Turns 54

#30

Post by bitwize »

Good old blinking cursors, one of those computing things that are almost invisible until they're missing.

The MAME emulation of the Tandy 2000 is reasonably complete. I get the feeling that it was barely worked on until Windows 1.0 for the 2000 turned up, then there was a flurry of activity to get that working. The reason is because while the system is mostly emulated, one critical component is not: the display board's support for a hardware blinking cursor. As a result, if you're navigating a word processing document in, say, WordStar, you're largely doing so blind. Only programs with a soft cursor (like GW-BASIC in graphic mode) work like they should.

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