frontpage.
newsnewestaskshowjobs

Made with ♥ by @iamnishanth

Open Source @Github

fp.

We Mourn Our Craft

https://nolanlawson.com/2026/02/07/we-mourn-our-craft/
1•ColinWright•1m ago•0 comments

Jim Fan calls pixels the ultimate motor controller

https://robotsandstartups.substack.com/p/humanoids-platform-urdf-kitchen-nvidias
1•robotlaunch•5m ago•0 comments

Exploring a Modern SMTPE 2110 Broadcast Truck with My Dad

https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2026/exploring-a-modern-smpte-2110-broadcast-truck-with-my-dad/
1•HotGarbage•5m ago•0 comments

AI UX Playground: Real-world examples of AI interaction design

https://www.aiuxplayground.com/
1•javiercr•6m ago•0 comments

The Field Guide to Design Futures

https://designfutures.guide/
1•andyjohnson0•6m ago•0 comments

The Other Leverage in Software and AI

https://tomtunguz.com/the-other-leverage-in-software-and-ai/
1•gmays•8m ago•0 comments

AUR malware scanner written in Rust

https://github.com/Sohimaster/traur
3•sohimaster•11m ago•1 comments

Free FFmpeg API [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RAuSVa4MLI
3•harshalone•11m ago•1 comments

Are AI agents ready for the workplace? A new benchmark raises doubts

https://techcrunch.com/2026/01/22/are-ai-agents-ready-for-the-workplace-a-new-benchmark-raises-do...
2•PaulHoule•16m ago•0 comments

Show HN: AI Watermark and Stego Scanner

https://ulrischa.github.io/AIWatermarkDetector/
1•ulrischa•16m ago•0 comments

Clarity vs. complexity: the invisible work of subtraction

https://www.alexscamp.com/p/clarity-vs-complexity-the-invisible
1•dovhyi•17m ago•0 comments

Solid-State Freezer Needs No Refrigerants

https://spectrum.ieee.org/subzero-elastocaloric-cooling
1•Brajeshwar•18m ago•0 comments

Ask HN: Will LLMs/AI Decrease Human Intelligence and Make Expertise a Commodity?

1•mc-0•19m ago•1 comments

From Zero to Hero: A Brief Introduction to Spring Boot

https://jcob-sikorski.github.io/me/writing/from-zero-to-hello-world-spring-boot
1•jcob_sikorski•19m ago•1 comments

NSA detected phone call between foreign intelligence and person close to Trump

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/07/nsa-foreign-intelligence-trump-whistleblower
7•c420•20m ago•1 comments

How to Fake a Robotics Result

https://itcanthink.substack.com/p/how-to-fake-a-robotics-result
1•ai_critic•20m ago•0 comments

It's time for the world to boycott the US

https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2026/2/5/its-time-for-the-world-to-boycott-the-us
3•HotGarbage•20m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Semantic Search for terminal commands in the Browser (No Back end)

https://jslambda.github.io/tldr-vsearch/
1•jslambda•20m ago•1 comments

The AI CEO Experiment

https://yukicapital.com/blog/the-ai-ceo-experiment/
2•romainsimon•22m ago•0 comments

Speed up responses with fast mode

https://code.claude.com/docs/en/fast-mode
4•surprisetalk•26m ago•0 comments

MS-DOS game copy protection and cracks

https://www.dosdays.co.uk/topics/game_cracks.php
3•TheCraiggers•27m ago•0 comments

Updates on GNU/Hurd progress [video]

https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/7FZXHF-updates_on_gnuhurd_progress_rump_drivers_64bit_smp_...
2•birdculture•27m ago•0 comments

Epstein took a photo of his 2015 dinner with Zuckerberg and Musk

https://xcancel.com/search?f=tweets&q=davenewworld_2%2Fstatus%2F2020128223850316274
12•doener•28m ago•2 comments

MyFlames: View MySQL execution plans as interactive FlameGraphs and BarCharts

https://github.com/vgrippa/myflames
1•tanelpoder•29m ago•0 comments

Show HN: LLM of Babel

https://clairefro.github.io/llm-of-babel/
1•marjipan200•29m ago•0 comments

A modern iperf3 alternative with a live TUI, multi-client server, QUIC support

https://github.com/lance0/xfr
3•tanelpoder•30m ago•0 comments

Famfamfam Silk icons – also with CSS spritesheet

https://github.com/legacy-icons/famfamfam-silk
1•thunderbong•31m ago•0 comments

Apple is the only Big Tech company whose capex declined last quarter

https://sherwood.news/tech/apple-is-the-only-big-tech-company-whose-capex-declined-last-quarter/
4•elsewhen•34m ago•0 comments

Reverse-Engineering Raiders of the Lost Ark for the Atari 2600

https://github.com/joshuanwalker/Raiders2600
2•todsacerdoti•36m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Deterministic NDJSON audit logs – v1.2 update (structural gaps)

https://github.com/yupme-bot/kernel-ndjson-proofs
1•Slaine•39m ago•0 comments
Open in hackernews

The Emacs Widget Toolkit

https://appetrosyan.github.io/posts/emacs-widget.html
48•signa11•9mo ago

Comments

spit2wind•9mo ago
There's also the Emacs Widget Library[1] (which I hoped this posted would be about). It's a plain text widget library that's quite powerful. Unfortunately (and surprisingly for Emacs), the documentation for it could use some love.

My understanding of the Widget Library is that it attaches various keywords and plists to a symbol which is considered the "widget". The library otherwise consists of functions that expect certain keywords on the "widget" symbol in order to perform actions or to be drawn on the screen.

The challenge is, the documentation doesn't clearly lay out what the keyword API is. This makes it hard to compose widgets in ways beyond what's shown in the docs.

[1] https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_mono/widget.h...

appetrosyan•9mo ago
The idea is that we extend that and give it direct access to SDL. Such that we can e.g. run a shader in the buffer background, or allow you to have floating windows (frames) interacting with each other.

I am very aware of the advantages conferred by TUI and I seek to expand those to the GUI; not dumb-down to the level of modern GUI toolkits (that to be fair are dealing with a completely different problem). Hopefully, this can lead to some ideas being easier to implement from within Emacs.

_mlbt•9mo ago
Somewhat off topic, but I love all the references to Led Zeppelin’s incredible song, Stairway to Heaven.
gudzpoz•9mo ago
Personally, and contrary to the article, I do prefer Emacs's plain text widgets over more "GUI-like" ones. Plain text widgets minimize the differences between TUI and GUI Emacs and also inherently offer text selection, searching, copying, and pasting, which nicely integrates with Emacs. I mean, not many GUI frameworks let you place a cursor within a button and select its text, do they? I believe this is a unique advantage of text-based widgets: while other GUI applications require a dedicated mechanism for searching through their settings, text-based widgets allow you to use any text-searching packages to perform these actions.

Reading through the article, the author seems to be hoping for a pure GUI approach with Emacs-like navigation mechanisms, but I am not convinced that this can be as flexible as text-based widgets. However, for packages used exclusively within a GUI environment (like el-easydraw [1], which relies quite heavily on SVG-based widgets), it would be nice to have a dedicated GUI widget library.

(There was a discussion on Reddit about this a week ago [2], and I saw some comments defending GTK and PGTK that might be worth reading.)

[1] https://github.com/misohena/el-easydraw/

[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/1kcgwme/the_emacs_wi...

appetrosyan•9mo ago
Author of the article.

This is what I was referring to when I talked about "rich verbs".

Many people feel that way. The idea here is not to tell you that you're wrong, but understand what you want and do it better on the GUI side. TUIs can do a lot and we should recognise their benefits. GUIs can do that too, and can sometimes do better things.

The text-based widgets done graphically do the trick. We can add stuff that can't be done in a TUI and see if they give you anything useful. If it can be done with text widgets means that it can be done in principle. GTK can't do it, and that's why I'm leaving it behind.

> (There was a discussion on Reddit about this a week ago [2], and I saw some comments defending GTK and PGTK that might be worth reading.)

The author of those comments abused their power on reddit. I will not get into the weeds, just say that I'd be happy to respond to the critique presented here in good faith.

robobro•9mo ago
Why did you delete the page?
appetrosyan•8mo ago
Didn't. I migrated to `hugo` and it trims off the `.html` at the end. The permalink is the same.
matt-attack•9mo ago
I agree and only use emacs in the console and love it. With the advent of lsp modes and real time typescript and linting it’s fantastic. But one thing I don’t like about the console is when LSP mode is giving you an in-line error on the right side of the terminal it’s wrapped and beautifully interspersed amongst your code, but it’s impossible to select multi line errors in order to paste into tools like ChatGPT. Since selecting the error, also selects your code on the left side.

Anyone have a good solution to this ?

LargoLasskhyfv•9mo ago
PSA: Use The Lucid Toolkit https://irreal.org/blog/?p=12672

https://old.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/1hlj04t/emacs_using_...

appetrosyan•9mo ago
That's the best thing to do for the moment.
robobro•9mo ago
404

Page Not Found

Sorry, this page does not exist.

You can head back to the homepage.

appetrosyan•9mo ago
Hi. I just migrated my blog to Hugo yesterday. The correct link is:

https://appetrosyan.github.io/posts/emacs-widget/