... Org mode and kind of note taking. And that meant that it wasn't
too difficult to get started with. But when I started more on
the coding side, because I'm a software engineer, you know,
on the day job. That kind of got me to think that the colors and
how themes look, how Emacs looks, was affecting. And that's
how it kind of came to picture. So I could have kind of gone
into a little bit more coding side of things, but I didn't
want to stress too much on the talk. So that's why I kind of
stuck to a very small bits of Org Mode and Elisp. And yeah, I
think that's how it came about. Yeah, but that's perfectly
fine. That's one of the chief reasons why we have two tracks
for Emacs content. We've had those for the last four years, I
think. It's because we have a general track, which is more
geared towards people who want a general... well,
generally people who are highly interested into org mode
and not necessarily into coding, but just to whet their
appetite to what can be done. And on the DevTrack, we have,
well, this year we have talked about Rust and about other
fancy things that people can do with Emacs. But, you know,
I'm also a software engineer, you know, we do this all the
time. Sometimes it's just fine to just chat about colors and
just the results of what we develop rather than how the
sausage is made. So that's completely fine too. I'm not sure
if you mentioned it in your presentation, but why color, out
of all the things you could be ricing on your setup, why were
you so interested about colors? I think it was just that
mainly that I had to do a lot of context switch between
different languages. Elisp is not the one because Elisp is
something that I would do for Emacs editing. But for day job,
I had to use mainly Go as I work with Kubernetes quite a bit. So
Go and also web languages like TypeScript, JavaScript, you
know, those languages, where I felt that whenever I was
switching context to a different language, I felt that it's
kind of annoying to see all the different colors in
languages like TypeScript, where, you know, VS Code way
would be very full of colors. which I felt that, okay, like,
why do I have to have that many different colors on let and
constant or the keywords where it could be just a white text?
It didn't have to be that colorful. So that was the bit, the
most annoying bit when it came to context switching. And I
felt that that just didn't happen in the Org Mode or writing
in general. So I had to find a way to make it work, make more
coding make my coding more kind of friendly to me and that's
when I thought maybe just the colors are something that's
bothering me and it actually was the case and that's how I got
to more into the color kind of journey and got too much into it
I guess. Right, and was it what eventually motivated you to
learn Elisp and to get into the Emacs core? Because it's
funny how you find plenty of people using Emacs in Org Mode
and then they find something that they take particular
issue with, for you it's the color, and then they just go all
in trying to pull the rope as far as they can to try to
understand as much as possible about what code is managing
this part of the application. Like for you it was color, for
me it was the org agenda, I desperately wanted to make Org
Agenda do something that it wasn't able to do. And five
years, well, actually, no, 10 years later, I find myself
hosting Emacs Cons. So, you never know just how far you're
going to be pulling this rope. So, it's really interesting
for me that my call was this. But back to the question, is this
what eventually motivated you to get into Elisp and the core
of Emacs? I think that the original journey to move to Emacs
was around keybindings that I got annoyed with with other
solutions, not just, you know, not speaking of Emacs
keybinding or anything, like anything in general. The main
reason was that I used Dovrak keyboard layout, and that
meant that all the C-c, C-v, C-p, whatever, It just is
all over the place. So I had to find something that could work
for me. And Emacs was a solution that allowed me to do
anything. And that's the kind of the journey that it
originally started. And from there, started tweaking org
mode and writing experience to be tuned to my liking. Color
was another thing that I thought, OK, maybe I could do it
easily with org mode. And when I started to use more of the
coding side of things on Emacs, I felt that, okay, that was
something I needed to solve. So Elisp was always kind of
just a toolkit that, you know, I knew that it was available. I
knew that it would be something that I want to be able to use.
So I think in a way color was a good segue to understand how I
can kind of work out more of a complex logic with the editor
without having to write JavaScript or things that I don't
particularly like. So yeah, I think the journey around the
functional languages, functional kind of programming was
always something that I was keen about. And yeah, the whole
journey kind of made sense for me. And then moving on to the
color was just one way to get more involved in. So I can
totally see that this journey kind of making to a little bit
different angle But yeah, we shall see how that really turns
out. But for now, I think I'm happy with the color setup. Now I
can really focus on the coding. Well, that's all good. And
I'm sure plenty of people listening to you now, you know,
find this relatable, how they eventually got into
programming. Like for you, you did say that you were a
software engineer now. But I found plenty of people,
especially doing workshops, that just started you know,
their software engineering journey just with Emacs and
they just realized they were doing something completely
different, like I was studying humanities. But then you
touch Emacs and you realize, yeah, this whole programming
shtick is actually pretty damn cool.
And then you find yourself again,
five to 10 years later, becoming a software
engineer. So yeah, that's all good.
So we do have a couple of
questions and I'd like to move into them so that I, I mean,
people have questions and for me it's okay for me to chat with
you but obviously it's better if people ask you the question
themselves. And again, if you want to ask questions to Ryota
directly, feel free to join us on BBB and whenever we're done
with the questions on the pad, I'm more than happy
to let you ask your questions live.
All right, so starting with the first question,
is there any intention to create a library
for working with more experimental color spaces, pulling
code out of Hasliberg for this purpose, perhaps? Although I
do not know. Hasliberg, you might? Yeah, Hasliberg. And to
answer the question, started the journey just for myself
and I didn't think that it would be actually useful for other
use cases and this conference talk just came about kind of
out of sheer luck really. So the idea I think I can definitely
work it out and I don't think there will be too, the original
code that I started with was I had to use some color space and I
started with sRGB and then went to HSL and then went to LCH. So
I think there has been quite a bit that I learned from it. At
the same time, I may be tempted to actually maybe perhaps
contribute back to ct.el rather than creating my own. I
think that would make more sense perhaps.
But for my own kind of taste that I thought
that it would be something I can work out in my theme,
but I don't have any I think, you know, making a
library is definitely something that I can think about, but
perhaps maybe making it too many packages isn't exactly
what I want. But for my own use case, I think I just wanted to
have something that just didn't have any external
dependency so that I can use the vanilla Emacs with my
colors. I think that's how it started, but I'm definitely up
for it if there is interest about it. Yeah, well, thank you
for this. It's always good to contribute.
I'm tempted to say
that's how they get you. You know, you do something really
cool and you share it with people and they have the, you know,
they just ask you, oh, do you have your code online? And you
realize, no, I haven't pushed it. And then they start
pressing you on. well, you need to do this, this is amazing
and you need to share it. You know, I had plenty of people ask
me to share my dot files when I was tackling the org agenda
issue that I mentioned earlier. And yeah, eventually when
you get to publishing your stuff, you also feel great
because you're putting a little bit of your intelligence
into the world and it can be the start of the journey for
someone else. You know, maybe someone will find your
library at some point and realize, yeah, I wanted to do
something slightly differently. and then they either
contribute to a library or they make their own but it's a
complete journey that starts with just people taking the
time to publish the content of the brain basically. Yeah,
that's the power of open source now. It's just how we really
appreciate the open source culture being cultivated
throughout so many years. And yeah, this is something that
I'm definitely keen about. So yeah, open for suggestions.
And exactly, that's how I started with the journey. And
yeah, while this is very experimental and very personal,
yeah, I'm not, you know, tied down to one particular way
only. So yeah we'll be open to suggestions like this one
which I would definitely think about. Yeah that's amazing
and just to be clear you know this is not a there's no
incentive one. I'm not pushing you to publish your library.
You know it was very personal for you and at the end if you
believe it might be useful for others it's a nice thing to
eventually think about publishing it. But just the fact
that you showed up at EmacsConf... Sorry, I'm
starting to lose my voice on the morning
of the first day. That's
not boding well for the two next days. I mean, just one day.
But just the
fact that you're showing up at EmacsConf and sharing about
all of this, the process, how you got to it eventually, it's
also a part of sharing. And I think it's also amazing in its
own way. Absolutely. Okay, I'm going to try to read the next
question and then try to cough a little bit. So can we have...
Oh, sorry, Bala. Sorry. I was the one who asked the question.
I thought I could ask it live here rather than... Thank you.
I'll go cough a little bit. So here I am. Thanks, Ryota, for
the nice talk. This is great. I loved it. Your attention to
detail was awesome.
So I was just looking at the code and I was
wondering, do you have a dark and a light theme variation
which can be made from your theme? Or do you have to customize
it every time? That was my question. And thanks for that.
Thank you very much. I appreciate your feedback and
questions. So to answer the question, the short answer is
that I do have both dark and light themes with some sorts of
standard colors that I personally liked. And there were a
few things that I showed in the demo. where I showed, I think,
three different dark theme colors. So light theme is
definitely something that I can do.
And the idea around Hasliberg theme
and just my theming in general was that
when I feel like I want to work in dark theme and when I want to
work in the standard way, I would just use the standard color.
But when I feel like maybe it's just so cold that I want
to have a bit of a warm colors near me, I would use the orange
theme, without changing too much of the kind of general
feeling and experience. So that can be said for the light
theme as well. So there is something and the kind of
customization isn't that difficult to extend. So I do have
both dark and light, but primarily I'm just looking at the
dark theme as my main driver. But yeah, they are both
available. Great. Thank you so much. I will definitely try
your theme out. I'm definitely on the lookout for a nice,
friendly theme. Thank you very much. As I said, this is a
personal theme. I'm not sure if it really fits everyone's
need, but it is one inspiration that I hope that can lead to
another nice theming that could work for someone
specifically for some use cases. I don't have to solve
everyone's problem. Yeah, and I mean, it was sufficient to
be inspirational to people. I mean, just Bala just
mentioned it right now, but I'm sure plenty of people who
watched live, but also people will be watching in the
future, will have the interest to speak by what you've done.
So thank you again so much for this. Yep. All right, well, I
don't see any further questions. So I suggest we move
towards closure. Ryota, do you have any last words? No, I
don't. So yeah, thank you very much for attending. And it was
great fun putting this together. And I really didn't think
that I would be talking about my personal colors and
personal favorites, like orange being my favorite color.
This wouldn't be something that I would say out in any
conference, to be honest. But it just came out to be. And
happy that I had a chance. So thank you very much for giving me
the opportunity to talk. in this amazing conference and
yeah I can't just wait to check out other talks which you know
I know that there isn't you know other talks that are
happening right now I was actually wanted to to join them and
check check that out so I will probably do that right now.
Well, sure. Well, I won't hold you any longer then. Thank
you. For me, it was just amazing to, you know, generally when
you ask someone what their favorite color, you know, they
just tell you orange or blue or whatever. They don't go then
to chat about 20 minutes about their favorite color and how
they tuned their entire editor to work exactly around their
favorite colors. So it was inspiring. And I also want to try
it out, frankly, because my theme has been utterly bad for
the last five years and I need some change into my life. All
right. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you very much,
everyone. Cheers. Bye-bye.