Make GUI look better

Make GUI look better

[Pavel Janík]

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Hi,

while doing some work on menus, I realized that Emacs' GUI is "weird"
comparing to other free software I used as an inspiration.

It is weird, because it uses too thick borders around menu, around toolbar
buttons etc. It is possible to make it suit your needs via customizing
some variables and X resources, but by default it is ugly.

A week ago I experimented with those variables and presented "new look" to
people I'm learning Emacs. They are mainly beginners with Emacs, but they
use various GUI programs (not only on GNU/Linux systems). Two of them find
new look quite impressive. But only when comparing to the "old looking"
(ie. default) Emacs. Four of them find it impressive even before seeing the
old look, because they *remember* those thick borders from the previous
lesson... The rest (only one person) did not see any difference.

How "new look" feels? I have just created four small screenshots. Two
screenshots shows menubar, two toolbar. Old and new ones.

Both menu and toolbar are important features, mainly for beginners. Those
people can better absorb the knowledge when the GUI looks similar too any
other programs. So I'm proposing changing the default look to the new
one. What do you think?

Menu:


[-- Attachment #2: Old menu --]
[-- Type: image/png, Size: 2796 bytes --]

[-- Attachment #3: New menu --]
[-- Type: image/png, Size: 4794 bytes --]

[-- Attachment #4: Type: text/plain, Size: 11 bytes --]


Toolbar:


[-- Attachment #5: Old toolbar --]
[-- Type: image/png, Size: 556 bytes --]

[-- Attachment #6: New toolbar --]
[-- Type: image/png, Size: 434 bytes --]

[-- Attachment #7: Type: text/plain, Size: 126 bytes --]


-- 
Pavel Janík

Don't stop at one bug.
                  --  The Elements of Programming Style (Kernighan & Plaugher)

Re: Make GUI look better

[Jason Rumney]

Pavel@Janik.cz (Pavel Janík) writes:

> Both menu and toolbar are important features, mainly for beginners. Those
> people can better absorb the knowledge when the GUI looks similar too any
> other programs. So I'm proposing changing the default look to the new
> one. What do you think?

I like the menu with smaller borders, but I think the current toolbar
looks better with its more pronounced button look.

-- 
Jason Rumney

Re: Make GUI look better

[Jan D.]

> Hi,
> 
> while doing some work on menus, I realized that Emacs' GUI is "weird"
> comparing to other free software I used as an inspiration.
> 
> It is weird, because it uses too thick borders around menu, around toolbar
> buttons etc. It is possible to make it suit your needs via customizing
> some variables and X resources, but by default it is ugly.

I think the GUI was made to look similar to the Motif default, I can't
tell the difference if I have two Emacsen next to each other, one with
Motif and one with Lucid menubars.  Motif defaults have been considered
a bit "heavy" by users used to some other look.

Your new look is more GTK-like, and thus perhaps a bit more modern looking.
I really can't say I prefer one over the other, they both look OK to me.

	Jan D.

Re: Make GUI look better

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: "Jan D." <jan.h.d@swipnet.se>
> Date: Sat, 20 Apr 2002 11:47:58 +0200 (MEST)
> 
> Your new look is more GTK-like, and thus perhaps a bit more modern looking.
> I really can't say I prefer one over the other, they both look OK to me.

FWIW, I also don't see anything ``heavy'' in the way Emacs looks in
both the toolkit and Motif/LessTif versions.

I think this is a matter of personal preferences, unless a large
majority of users prefers the GTK-like look.

Re: Make GUI look better

[Pavel Janík]

   From: "Eli Zaretskii" <eliz@is.elta.co.il>
   Date: Sat, 20 Apr 2002 14:51:20 +0300

   > FWIW, I also don't see anything ``heavy'' in the way Emacs looks in
   > both the toolkit and Motif/LessTif versions.
   > 
   > I think this is a matter of personal preferences, unless a large
   > majority of users prefers the GTK-like look.

The question is: do we want Emacs look like Motif or GTK? I prefer GTK
look. And yes, its license is much better... I'd vote for changing the
defaults to not look like Motif.
-- 
Pavel Janík

/* Thanks to Rob `CmdrTaco' Malda for not influencing this code in any
 * way.
 */
                  -- 2.4.3 net/core/netfilter.c

Re: Make GUI look better

[Pavel Janík]

   From: "Jan D." <jan.h.d@swipnet.se>
   Date: Sat, 20 Apr 2002 11:47:58 +0200 (MEST)

   > Your new look is more GTK-like, and thus perhaps a bit more modern looking.
   > I really can't say I prefer one over the other, they both look OK to me.

Maybe we should ask "normal" (I too do not count myself as "normal" here
too ;-) users for their opinions?
-- 
Pavel Janík

What do you want to happen? You want to have an interface like
	echo 0 > /proc/bugs/mm
that makes mm bugs go away?
                  -- Linus Torvalds in LKML about "Tuning for bugs"

Re: Make GUI look better

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Pavel@Janik.cz (Pavel =?iso-8859-2?q?Jan=EDk?=)
> Date: Sat, 20 Apr 2002 15:24:30 +0200
> 
>    > FWIW, I also don't see anything ``heavy'' in the way Emacs looks in
>    > both the toolkit and Motif/LessTif versions.
>    > 
>    > I think this is a matter of personal preferences, unless a large
>    > majority of users prefers the GTK-like look.
> 
> The question is: do we want Emacs look like Motif or GTK? I prefer GTK
> look. And yes, its license is much better... I'd vote for changing the
> defaults to not look like Motif.

Note the "/LessTif" part in my message: LessTif is free software.

Re: Make GUI look better

[Richard Stallman]

The new version looks a little better to me,
but I am no expert on this sort of thing,
so I will defer to others' opinion.

Re: Make GUI look better

[Francesco Potorti`]

Pavel@Janik.cz (Pavel Janík) writes:

   The question is: do we want Emacs look like Motif or GTK?

GTK, definitely.

Re: Make GUI look better

[Stefan Monnier]

> The new version looks a little better to me,
> but I am no expert on this sort of thing,
> so I will defer to others' opinion.

FWIW I tend to agree (and have similar changes in my .Xresources file).


	Stefan

Re: Make GUI look better

[Kai Großjohann]

"Jan D." <jan.h.d@swipnet.se> writes:

> I think the GUI was made to look similar to the Motif default, I can't
> tell the difference if I have two Emacsen next to each other, one with
> Motif and one with Lucid menubars.  Motif defaults have been considered
> a bit "heavy" by users used to some other look.

I think Motif does not necessarily mean that the 3d relief effect
needs to be so high.  FWIW, I think that the CDE implementation on
Solaris 2.6 uses a very "flat" look, like the new look proposed by
Pavel.  (Netscape 4.x looks different under Solaris CDE than under
Solaris OpenWindows: under CDE its scrollbar is "flat", under
OpenWindows the scrollbar is "high".)

I vote for the new flat look.

kai
-- 
Silence is foo!

Re: Make GUI look better

[Pavel Janík]

   From: Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>
   Date: Sun, 21 Apr 2002 14:02:10 -0600 (MDT)

   > The new version looks a little better to me,
   > but I am no expert on this sort of thing,
   > so I will defer to others' opinion.

If you'd like to try it, here are excepts of my config files:

Resources:
----------

emacs.pane.menubar.verticalSpacing: 2
emacs.pane.menubar.shadowThickness: 1
emacs.pane.menubar.margin: 1
emacs.pane.menubar.arrowSpacing: 1

emacs.menu*.verticalSpacing: 2
emacs.menu*.shadowThickness: 1
emacs.menu*.margin: 1

.emacs:
-------

(setq tool-bar-button-margin 4)
(setq tool-bar-button-relief 1)


-- 
Pavel Janík

In theory, practice and theory are the same, but in practice they are
different.
                  -- Larry McVoy