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Ask HN: Why doesn't emacs look pretty

4 points by abc_lisper ↗ HN
Before downmodding me, please understand this is a serious question. I have been a long time emacs user, and probably will stay like that for long time to come. What is it that makes modern editors like Sublime and Atom look so nice compared to Emacs? The fonts, UI toolkit or just general bad design in Emacs? Whenever I look at some other editor, I am deeply dissatisfied with it when compared to Emacs. So, why can't I have the best of both worlds. An editor that looks modern but is a Emacs at heart?

10 comments

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pathelectronica
Some cursory googling will probably help you tart up emacs a bit. eg "emacs fonts", "emacs colour theme"

Also look at some alternative emacs like aquamacs.

abc_lisper
Um, I have been an emacs user for a long time. I have done all that; still it does not look good as Sublime or Atom. I am looking for information on how it could be improved and what Emacs is lacking
pathelectronica
eclipse with emacs key bindings?
abc_lisper
Key bindings don't make emacs. It is my ability to bend it to my will that makes emacs emacs.

So here's my question again. Which toolkit does it use, what makes it look like it is built for Windows 3.1? Does anybody know?

nprescott
This isn't a very well-formed question so it is hard to answer meaningfully. You will need to identify what it means to "look so nice" since that is entirely subjective. I think once you've answered that you are well on your way to answering your own question.

For what it's worth, I just opened ST for comparison and it looks nearly identical, fonts render the same between them. I believe ST and Atom have some UI elements that aren't integrated into Emacs out-of-the-box like tabs and mini-maps; is this what you are referring to?

abc_lisper
> I believe ST and Atom have some UI elements that aren't integrated into Emacs out-of-the-box like tabs and mini-maps; is this what you are referring to?

No.

> "look so nice" since that is entirely subjective

Majority of people who aren't familiar with emacs would find it ugly. You can do it now. Show it to a couple of people who don't know sublime or emacs, and ask them to compare those.

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veddox
I get the impression that "it looks good" has only fairly recently become an important design consideration for hackers. The problem is not specific to Emacs, quite a bit of Linux FOSS has a pretty ugly GUI. It's starting to get better, but fixing early design choices can be a lot of work. I guess nobody has bothered putting that much work into the Emacs GUI yet...

Until then: use Emacs in terminal. That's the way it was meant to be used originally, and it still looks best that way ;-)

abc_lisper
> That's the way it was meant to be used originally, and it still looks best that way

Yeah, may be you are right. I will try it.