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[[!meta title="On the design of text editors"]]
[[!meta copyright="Copyright © 2021 Nicolas P. Rougier"]]
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# On the design of text editors
Nicolas P. Rougier
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Text editors are written by and for developers. They come
with a large set of default and implicit choices in terms of layout,
typography, colorization and interaction that hardly change from one
editor to the other. It is not clear if these implicit choices derive
from the ignorance of alternatives or if they derive from developers'
habits, reproducing what they are used to. Durint this talk, I will
characterize these implicit choices and illustrate what are some
alternatives using GNU Emacs.
# Outline
1. Review of a "modern" code editor (5mn)
2. Introduction of an alternative using Emacs (5mn)
# Links from the slides:
* [Elegant Emacs](https://github.com/rougier/elegant-emacs) (https://github.com/rougier/elegant-emacs)
* [On the Design of Text Editors](https://arxiv.org/abs/2008.06030) (https://arxiv.org/abs/2008.06030)
* [N Λ N O Emacs](https://github.com/rougier/nano-emacs) (https://github.com/rougier/nano-emacs)
* [svg-lib (ELPA)](https://elpa.gnu.org/packages/svg-lib.html) (https://elpa.gnu.org/packages/svg-lib.html)
* [nano-theme (ELPA)](https://elpa.gnu.org/packages/nano-theme.html) (https://elpa.gnu.org/packages/nano-theme.html)
* [nano-modeline (ELPA)](https://elpa.gnu.org/packages/nano-modeline.html) (https://elpa.gnu.org/packages/nano-modeline.html)
* [nano-agenda (ELPA)](https://elpa.gnu.org/packages/nano-agenda.html) (https://elpa.gnu.org/packages/nano-agenda.html)
# Discussion
- What's this theme?
- i'll be sharing this with my friends that praise on vscode
- Wow, incredible analysis of that editor.
- looks beautiful
- how much of that is just bigger margins and roboto though?
- I love nano Emacs. I use it too
- i wonder if I can steal the splash screen and header line
- I really think that the default emacs theme could use this kind of effort and scrutiny in order to improve it
- A4: good idea, but few people have A4 *screens*...
- holy crap it looks so good
- yet again, though, the contrast is awful! black and white, please, not light grey and not-quite-so-light grey. it's almost unreadable, IMHO
- How hard would it be to integrate nano emacs changes with the default emacs? Like, would there be a lot of pushback?
- of course! there was massive pushbac over using curly quotes, for goodness' sake
- Are you aware of the modus-themes and what are your thoughts after contrast and accessibility?
- yeah, i just love modus themes by Prot because i'm colorblind and the fact that it has a strict contrast ratio is really really helpful, but even on modus themes i have to set success, error and warning to some really strong colors like pure red, green and blue
- I'm *not* colourblind and having high contrast is still good! there's a reason books are black on white, not grey on grey. or at least the background and body-text foreground must be highly distinct
- protesilaos: there are also options for deuteranopia, in case you need them (will need to refactor them for simplicity's sake)
- What Nicolas Rougier does is most welcome. Emacs can benefit a lot from such work.
- hmmm maybe Emacs needs to be able to handle WOFF! sounds like a job for fontconfig, I might look at it some day
- Nano Emacs + modus-themes would be a perfect combination, as it were.
# Contact information
* Contact [nicolas.rougier@inria.fr](mailto:nicolas.rougier@inria.fr)
* Follow my work at [github.com/rougier](https://github.com/rougier)
* Support my work at [github.com/sponsors/rougier](https://github.com/sponsors/rougier) or [en.liberapay.com/rougier/](https://en.liberapay.com/rougier/)
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