Re: "modern" colors Re: Changes for emacs 28

[Ergus <spacibba@aol.com>]

On Sat, Sep 12, 2020 at 10:52:37AM -0400, Alfred M. Szmidt wrote:
>   I will try my best but my terminology could be totally wrong (worst than
>   my English). (Note that I only use emacs from the terminal anyway)
>
>I'd like to get back to the initial premsis that "some color changes"
>could make Emacs more modern.  While this list is interesting, and
>lists things that Emacs already provides, it is slightly on the left
>side of the topic.  I wanted to understand what is the meaning of
>"modern", and "some color" changes seemed to be easy enough to
>describe.
>
The meaning of modern is by default not old; it means not to look like a
win95 app in 2020. The grays and white backgrounds has been substituted
by blue black and other colors.

There is not science here. Just a matter of preferences and
subjectivity. But looking around popular applications, you will find
that there is a pattern among the years.
>
>   2) Modeline: Our modeline is a kind of relic from other times. With the
>   same gray color in the terminal and some cryptic information. It also
>   shows the line but not the column by default and the file status is
>   somehow in that cryptic initial part I don't think many users understand
>   very well.
>
>   Just adding an * to the filename in modeline (and or tab when using
>   them) or changing the color is easier to understand. Than
>   -UUU:----F1
>
>How is that different from today?  ** signifies that the buffer is
>modified...
>
I maaany ways. Not for pleasure that's the first thing all the distros
change that, powerline became popular and so on.

Just look around; don't believe me

>New users don't have to understand it from the start though, it is
>something one can come to understand with using Emacs.  If you hover
>with the mouse over each item, it will describe what each thing means,
>and you can change each thing accordingly.
>
New users are used to know if the document has changes at least. And in
the applications they use: filename* by default.

>   3) Colors: People prefer higher contrast in general 4 example: in my
>   system when the region es enabled the default gray color is so light
>   that I can't see it. Same applies to icon that when enabled or disabled
>   the difference sometimes is minimal.
>
>Can you provide research on that people do actually prefer higher
>contrast in general?  Your example doesn't really follow from the
>first claim -- since that is your specific preference, not everyone
>elses preference.
>
Lock back in this same thread there was a long discussion about
that. The supporters of light colors brought some articles about
astigmatism and so on, while the others bring different ones.

Again look around and compare what you see.

>   Usually blues and green are more attractive to users (that's why MS
>   decided to use them for their OS). PANTONE448C (a kind of yellow + grey)
>   is considered the ugliest color ever and our UI and fonts are mostly
>   grey and yellow-orange.
>
>Again, what is the basis for these claims?  You make several of them
>that this or that is the case, but you do not say on what basis the
>claim is made, it would be very interesting to read about it.
>
Blue is known to be the most favorite color since 1920. Don't trust me,
just google it. There have been studies, has to do with the sky and the
sea bla bla bla. Yellow on the other hand is associated with illness and
old white things (again this is veeeery subjective).

But when MS decided to create their operative system they did after a
market study.

Again. Don't trust me, and actually these are not all my preferences. I
just asked a couple of students on yesterday and compared with what they
use and said.

>For example, several applications (e.g, even those that you mention)
>also implement light colored themes.  Most source forges also default
>to white backgrounds, so the claim that there is some preference for
>one (or the other!) seems weak.
>
>Only that a general acceptance that people have a preference for
>something; and Emacs already has means for switching to dark/light
>backgrounds -- maybe this could be made easier to switch, for example
>a dark/light-toggle-mode that switches between the default dark and
>light coloring scheme.
>
This is actually what is being discussed. Any way just look at the
popular downloaded emacs themes the so called "distros", and the actual
"top" editors. Sourceforge is also kind of "old" as users prefer github
(which is actually working in a dark mode too). Understand that I never
said we should set dark themes by default; I just replied what young
developers consider "old". 

>   4) Right click: (Probably it is the most lacking functionality and
>   surprising for any user not using the terminal.) Right click is expected
>   to bring a panel with the most common operations. It is useful, fast
>   and somehow standard since 1995 while removing most of the needs of the
>   toolbar which takes precious vertical space.
>
>The behaviours you describe are not that standard on the systems where
>Emacs is mainly used, namely GNU systems with X11 for right clickity
>behaviour, where it has been standard for the last 30 odd years (and
>probobly longer, since this behaviour dates back at least to the Lisp
>Machine).
>
>It is important to remeber that Emacs has to pick some default, as it
>happens it is the one where it was developed on.
>
The right click contextual menu is standard so far in geany, gedit,
kate, jedit, anjuta, android studio, arduino studio, sublime, atom,
kwrite, kdevelop, qtcreator, clion, VSCode, Notepad++, Bluefish, Komodo,
Brakets, Eclipse... + browsers, Office applications, texmaker,
Texstudio, Kile and so on.

It is missing only in gvim and emacs in my experience.

So maybe 30 years ago it wasn't standard but today it is.

>   6) fill-column-indicator, indent-column-indicator,
>   highlight-all-like-this on mouse double click and idle,
>   show-parent-mode, show-trailing-whitespaces.
>
>Could you explain how those modes are useful, is it for new users,
>programming, what exactly?
>
>Seeing the fill-column-indicator seems slightly useless, since if you
>fill the region that will be honoured anyway.  indent-column-indicator
>seems to be a programming thing and probobly only useful for some
>specific programming languages or narrow use cases, same with
>highlight-all-like-this and show-trailing-whitespaces.
>
>
Just look around.

Again I never said that we should follow the fashion in all details. But
when someone tells "emacs looks old" these are the arguments.