Make GUI look better

[Pavel@Janik.cz (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 --]

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Toolbar:


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

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

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-- 
Pavel Janík

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