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

[Ergus]

On Fri, Sep 11, 2020 at 10:23:19AM -0400, Stefan Monnier wrote:
> > If you change a single face it doesn't improve anything. The whole thing
> > is the important. The overall result after all the changes. A light
> > toolbar looks worst with a dark background as well; big icons looks
> > terrible with small fonts.
>
> I personally have no idea what "modern" looks like or what makes
> something look "modern", so I'd welcome a description.  Showing me
> examples doesn't really help me.  By description I don't mean "change
> this one face to foo", but rather the underlying ideas behind the
> various changes.
>
>
>        Stefan
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)

1) The toolbar: Some applications don't use them anymore as they have a
full panel on right click and the hamburger icon like the browsers.

1.1) Using system icons generally has not so good effect either; because
gnome themes are not good in general by default (except ubuntu and some
others who changed them). Some applications bring their own icons just
to look better OOTB (not telling we should do the same)

OTOH Plasma (KDE) has better icons; but all the environment is now a bit
darker, so emacs looks like something not really fixing there (too
light).

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

You can see all the popular alternatives around.

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.

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.

There has been a long discussion these days about light vs dark
themes... But as you can see all the applications are implementing a
dark mode and people prefer dark today (maybe tomorrow this changes)

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.

Extra ide features (we already have but hidden) and are in some editors
around bu default (again I'm not telling we should do the same):

5) sidebar: most code editors have a button somewhere in the interface
to show/hide the sidebar to explore and open files/access symbols or see
open files. That bottom is usually in what we we call modeline or it is
a tight bar on the lest to toggle it on and off quickly. (You find them
in atom, sublime, geany, clion, VSCode). That's why in emacs it is
becoming more and more popular things like neotree.

6) fill-column-indicator, indent-column-indicator,
highlight-all-like-this on mouse double click and idle,
show-parent-mode, show-trailing-whitespaces.

Hope this can help