Box face

Box face

[Anand Tamariya]

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Hi,
Considering SES is part of Emacs core, I'm wondering why is there no box
face defined in the core? A cell looks much better that way instead of just
an underline.

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Re: Box face

[Po Lu]

Anand Tamariya <atamariya@gmail.com> writes:

> Considering SES is part of Emacs core, I'm wondering why is there no
> box face defined in the core? A cell looks much better that way
> instead of just an underline.

Faces with boxes are available in the Emacs core.

And I disagree that spreadsheet cells look better with a box.  IMHO,
that leads to clutter which interferes with reading the spreadsheet.

Re: Box face

[Anand Tamariya]

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On Fri, Mar 4, 2022 at 12:08 PM Po Lu <luangruo@yahoo.com> wrote:

> Anand Tamariya <atamariya@gmail.com> writes:
>
> > Considering SES is part of Emacs core, I'm wondering why is there no
> > box face defined in the core? A cell looks much better that way
> > instead of just an underline.
>
> Faces with boxes are available in the Emacs core.
>
Can you name the face? Just would like to avoid redefining one.

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Re: Box face

[Po Lu]

Anand Tamariya <atamariya@gmail.com> writes:

> Can you name the face? Just would like to avoid redefining one.

There are many of them: mode-line, custom-button, etc.

Re: Box face

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Anand Tamariya <atamariya@gmail.com>
> Date: Fri, 4 Mar 2022 11:54:33 +0530
> 
> Considering SES is part of Emacs core, I'm wondering why is there no box face defined in the core? A cell
> looks much better that way instead of just an underline.

What do you mean by "box face"?  :box is an existing attribute of a
face, so any face can be assigned the attribute to have the box
appearance.

Re: Box face

[Anand Tamariya]

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What do you mean by "box face"?  :box is an existing attribute of a
> face, so any face can be assigned the attribute to have the box
> appearance.
>

Something similar to underline face - an extension of default face with
:box attribute activated. May be, call it a cell face or something similar.
This way a new user can use it for a spreadsheet scenario if he so desires.

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Re: Box face

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Anand Tamariya <atamariya@gmail.com>
> Date: Fri, 4 Mar 2022 13:06:33 +0530
> Cc: Emacs Devel <emacs-devel@gnu.org>
> 
>  What do you mean by "box face"?  :box is an existing attribute of a
>  face, so any face can be assigned the attribute to have the box
>  appearance.
> 
> Something similar to underline face - an extension of default face with :box attribute activated. May be, call it
> a cell face or something similar. This way a new user can use it for a spreadsheet scenario if he so desires.

If we want to give users the ability to customize how cells look, it
is best to have a special face for the text in a cell.  By default
this face could just inherit from 'default', but users who'd like the
box appearance could then customize that face to add the :box
attribute.

So patches to add a special 'ses-cell' face are welcome, I think.

In general, face appearance is highly subjective, and so is best left
to user customizations, rather than forcing some attributes on
everyone by default.  Also, the :box attribute is only suitable for a
relatively small number of specialized display situation, so having a
special face for that doesn't seem justified.

Re: Box face

[Tim Cross]

Anand Tamariya <atamariya@gmail.com> writes:

> Hi,
> Considering SES is part of Emacs core, I'm wondering why is there no box face defined in the
> core? A cell looks much better that way instead of just an underline.
>

You can add the :box attribute to any face. So, if you want the face
used by SES to highlight the cell to have a box effect, you can just
customise it by adding the :box attributes or make it inherit from one
of the existing faces which already have a box attribute.

I think this sort of thing is where themes come into play. I wouldn't be
surprised if some themes already set a box attribute for this
face. In most cases, I think it is probably best for the default face
definition to be as simple as possible and compatible with different
display environments while leaving the eye candy stuff to
themes which users can choose based on personal preferences.