path: root/2024/captions/emacsconf-2024-casual--reimagining-the-emacs-user-experience-with-casual-suite--charles-choi--main.vtt

WEBVTT captioned by sachac, checked by bhavin

NOTE introduction

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Hello, my name is Charles Choi and welcome to my talk:

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"Reimagining the Emacs user experience with Casual Suite."

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Casual Suite is a set of opinionated user interfaces to

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different modes offered in Emacs. Before I get into

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describing Casual in detail, let's first talk about the

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existing Emacs user experience. To make Emacs go, people

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can either invoke commands by name with

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execute-extended-command,

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run a command directly with a pre-assigned

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key binding, finally, use a mouse menu if it's available.

NOTE Recall vs recognition

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From human-computer interface research, there is a

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concept of recall versus recognition in user interface

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design. Let's show their distinction by example. A common

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recall interface is password entry. Absent any historical

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affordances, a user must directly remember information to

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succeed with this interface. In contrast, menus offer

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immediate visual cues on what commands are available. This

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allows a user to recognize familiar behavior to support

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successful selection of it. From user interface research,

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the key finding is this. Interfaces emphasizing

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recognition are much easier to use than those relying on

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recall. In this light, we see that the Emacs user experience

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leans too much towards recall. Completion in history can

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help tip the scales towards recognition, but only by a

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little bit.

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This reliance on recall is discouraging to users both new

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and old, and that's a shame because Emacs has so many useful

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commands. But the kicker is that most of them are

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infrequently used. You can't recall them all. At least I

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can't. So, a conundrum. While I've been using Emacs since

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the early 90s, truthfully, it's been only in this past

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decade that I've leveled up in using it. Org Mode, Magit,

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Eglot, Avy, and many other packages have transformed how I

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use it. I can only deal with so much cognitive load and

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physically straining key bindings. So, what to do about it?

NOTE Emacs with keyboard-driven menus

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Let's bring back an old ideal.

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Keyboard-driven menus have been around since TTY video

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terminals with mainframes. If you're old enough to recall

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working with such interfaces, these terms will seem

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familiar. They all worked with the limitations of

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text-based video displays.

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With keyboard-driven menus, if a command exists but nobody

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can find it, it's not really useful. A well-designed menu

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can make a command discoverable. If the command is

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infrequently used, making it recognizable helps a lot. And

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for working primarily with text, having keyboard-only

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interactions encourages flow. Given the above, the next

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steps seem natural:

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augment Emacs with keyboard-driven menus. This is not

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saying that I want to obsolete name commands, keybindings,

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and mouse menus. They all can happily coexist. Emacs is

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large. It can contain multitudes.

NOTE Transient

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Conveniently, Emacs has a built-in library for building

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such menus. It's called Transient, and it's been around

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since Emacs 28. Developed primarily by Jonas Bernoulli as a

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UI toolkit for Magit, Transient has an essential feature

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for building great keyboard-driven interfaces.

NOTE A Transient menu can be pinned

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A transient menu can be pinned and their state updated as

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commands are issued from them. This lets us build

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interfaces that reflect internal state changes made by

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commands issued from the user. This is great because many

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modes have stateful behavior, and guess what? Emacs has a lot

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of modes.

NOTE Modes are apps, really

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If you think about it, Emacs modes are akin to the

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ecosystem of apps that we see today, but with far less

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structure and packaging. A mode, like an app, focuses on

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delivering specific behavior to the user. There are many

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built-in modes in Emacs, and these modes are complex with

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dozens, if not hundreds, of commands. Calc itself has over

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1,000 of them. It's frustrating to know that these commands

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are there, but I really can't access them via recall.

NOTE Transient all the modes!

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So I decided to do something about it, and that was to transient

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all the modes, or at least the most major ones. This past

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summer, I had the time and resources to start building

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Transient interfaces for modes that I wanted to more

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elegantly use. I decided to call this work Casual. Given its

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definition, it seemed like a good fit for the vibe that I

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wanted these interfaces to embody.

NOTE Casual design principles

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Design principles that I embraced up front were

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handcrafted information architecture and layout. This is

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largely an exercise in mapping a mode's command set to a

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hierarchical menu structure. I wanted these menus to make

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sense to most people. Ideally, users would not have to read

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documentation to get at the command that they wanted. Early

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on, I quickly learned that it was impossible to maintain the

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existing default key bindings when mapping them over to a

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hierarchical menu. Also, some bindings I just flat out

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disagreed with. I resolved to be friendly, but not

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beholden to them. In all of the above, I've gone out of my way

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to make clear that my design decisions are opinionated.

NOTE Casual design conventions

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Using casual.

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To reinforce habit, a common key binding is used per mode to

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raise a main menu. This key binding is left to user

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preference. For me, that binding is C-o.

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Command bindings are mnemonic when possible.

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Mode-specific settings are given their own menu. Since

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transient menus can be pinned, we can support repeat or

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stateful behavior in a mode.

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As of this writing, there are 11 modes supported by Casual,

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with several more on the way.

NOTE Casual Dired

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Let's look at the Casual menu

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for Dired to highlight the design conventions previously

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mentioned.

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In a Dired Emacs window, the user can invoke their preferred

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key binding to call a top-level Casual main menu. This main

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menu is displayed at the bottom of the Emacs frame. Zooming

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into this menu, we see the commands offered in it

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categorized into different sections. Each command has a

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key binding, usually a single character shown before its

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label. The File section holds commands that act upon the

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currently selected item or marked items. The Directory

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section holds commands that affect the current directory

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or its subdirs within it. The Mark section has marking

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commands that allow for aggregate operations. The

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Navigation section shows commands that move the point in a

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direct buffer. The quick section provides access to

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bookmark and buffer list commands. Search and replace

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commands are grouped in the search section. New directory

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and file creation are given their own section. Finally, at

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the bottom of the menu are commands dedicated to Casual menu

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navigation.

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Casual is conformant to Transient conventions where the

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key binding C-g for dismiss one and C-q to dismiss all

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menus are honored. Another transient convention is to

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reserve the key binding q to quit the current mode. For most

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main menus, casual uses the , key binding to invoke a

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mode-specific settings menu. Casual also adopts the

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common UI convention of using ... >

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symbols to denote required input and submenus

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respectively.

NOTE Casual EditKit

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Some commands are more global or non-mode specific in

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nature. A great deal of these commands relate to editing,

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which I find to be a prime motivation for using Emacs. Let's

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examine one such menu that supports this.

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The main menu for Casual EditKit is designed to provide easy

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access to editing and editing-related commands. Like the

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previous Dired menu, it organizes commands into different

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sections.

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Commands related to file and buffer operations are in the

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File section. Commands for editing text are in the Edit

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section. S- or balanced expression commands are given a

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dedicated section for their own. More often than not, in

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many modes, I find them to do what I want.

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The tools section provides access to common tools.

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Bookmarks I consider to be an essential feature. If you

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haven't used them, it's never too late to start. Emacs

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window management commands are given this section.

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Commands for search and replace, macros, and projects can

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be accessed from here. Finally, the menu navigation

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section. Note that register commands can be accessed from

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here.

NOTE EditKit demo

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Okay, enough screenshots. Let's look at Casual in action

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with a demo of the EditKit menus. Let's start our demo of

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casual-editkit with raising the menu, which is bound to

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C-o. You'll see the menu pop up here. In

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particular, we want to look at the edit operation. We'll

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press e and we'll see a number of menu items that allow you to

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make editing transformations to the text, be it marking,

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copying, killing, transposing, transforming, moving, or

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deleting the text. You'll see also that there is a submenu

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for rectangle operations. Let's first...

NOTE Marking and moving

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Let's actually dig through and look at what's in the Mark submenu.

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You'll see that there are increments of text in which you can

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mark. You can mark a word, a sentence, a paragraph, and

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balanced expression. If we go back, you'll see a similar

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pattern for copying as well as killing. Transposing.

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Let's go and try to move a sentence. We have the point there at

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hello there. We'll move that sentence around. If we

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press s, we can move it backward or forward. In this case,

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let's move it forward. We'll press f. You'll see hello

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there move up a sentence. Then we can also press b to move

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it back. Then press RET to dismiss. Also, if we wanted

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to, we can... In this menu particularly, you'll see that we

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also have cursor navigation, so we can move the point there.

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That's not in all the menus, but in a good part number of the

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menus in Casual Edit Kit, you'll see that here. Let's press

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RET to dismiss that.

NOTE Rectangles

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Let's actually look at some rectangle operations here.

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In this case, we have a list with

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items x, y, and z. Let's say we wanted to prefix each item

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here with a string. We'll say we want to put in there

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hello. One way of doing that is to make a rectangle. So

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if we go into our rectangle menu, first off, what we need to do

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is define that rectangle region. We'll press m to mark

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where the point is right there. Then we can use our cursor

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operation to move the point to define the rectangle. In this

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case, it's right at the start there. We can use the string

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insert command, i, to insert hello, colon, and then we'll

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put a space there to make it look a little nicer. Sure

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enough, that's in there.

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We can have access to a number of rectangle commands here.

NOTE Numbering

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If we wanted to, let's say, number, we can go through that same

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operation here, define a region, a rectangle region that

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is, and press n. You'll see that it has incremented a

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number for each item in that rectangle region. We can also

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tap u to undo these operations

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and leave that at that.

NOTE Sorting

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Sorting. If we select a region here, And we go back. You'll

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see that the sort submenu is now enabled. Sorting won't work

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unless you have a region started. That's one of the nice

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things about transient is that it allows you to visually

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enable or disable command items with regards to whatever

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the current state or context is here. In this case is

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whether or not you have a region highlighted. Let's say we

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want to sort these two columns of numbers and so there's a

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command called n here which is numeric fields. Let's choose that

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here. Sure enough we get that. But there's a nice twist

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there. Let's say we wanted to sort on the second column.

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Let's move our point back up to here and we'll mark that.

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Since everything is in a continuous line, we can sort of

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pretend that this region is actually a paragraph

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and mark that.

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We'll go and select our sorting routine. But now we need to

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figure out how to make numeric fields sort on the second

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column. In transient, if we press a ?, that

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gives us basically a intermediate help section where, if we

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press a key binding, it will tell us or load the docstring for

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the command that's there. That command in this case is

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sort-numeric-fields. It requires an argument. That

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argument can be passed using the prefix argument,

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C-u. Press q. Let's do that. In this case, we

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want to check or use the value 2 and press n. Sure enough,

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that region is sorted with respect to the second column.

NOTE Casual has transformed my user experience with Emacs

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Before Casual, so many powerful Emacs commands were not

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available to me because they were too hard to recall or I

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could not discover them. Making Casual has changed that,

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letting me reimagine more positively my user experience

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with Emacs. If you're interested in any of what I've shown

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today, I invite you to try out Casual.

NOTE Thanks and acknowledgements

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Before I leave, my thanks and acknowledgments

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go out to the following people.

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First, to Jonas Bernoulli for making Transient and Magit.

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Casual would not be possible without your work. Next, to

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Psionic-k for writing Transient Showcase. It showed me how I

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could build casual. To all the casual users and their

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support, I am genuinely appreciative. Finally, to Jon

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Snader for writing the kind posts on Casual on the Irreal

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website. Thank you.

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Casual can be found on MELPA,

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and its repository is hosted on GitHub.