frontpage.
newsnewestaskshowjobs

Made with ♥ by @iamnishanth

Open Source @Github

fp.

The Economics of Bicycles for the Mind

https://www.nber.org/papers/w34034
1•Rexxar•24s ago•0 comments

Show HN: Waycore – an open-source, offline-first modular field computer

1•DGrechko•3m ago•0 comments

MakerLinks – A free link-in-bio page for indie hackers and builders

https://www.makerlinks.page/
1•amamuwala•4m ago•2 comments

We Lost the Thread on the Data Lake

https://blog.matterbeam.com/we-lost-the-thread-on-the-data-lake/
1•mikepk•5m ago•1 comments

The Park Ranger Scenario (2025 manifesto)

https://legacybranch.substack.com/p/eat-drink-and-be-merry-for-tomorrow
2•legacybranch•7m ago•0 comments

Weight-loss jab prescriptions double as Scottish doctors tackle obesity

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/scotland/article/weight-loss-jab-prescriptions-double-as-doctors-tack...
1•bookofjoe•10m ago•1 comments

Collective Action Problem

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_action_problem
1•danielschreber•12m ago•0 comments

Turning images into structured signals for modern search

https://visualquerypro.com
1•kalirobot•15m ago•1 comments

Show HN: I "crashed" Gemini 3.0 Pro

1•_rtld_global_ro•18m ago•0 comments

RotMG Map Seeds

https://www.redblobgames.com/blog/2025-11-07-rotmg-seeds/
1•guiambros•20m ago•0 comments

Ask HN: How to go back to listening to MP3s?

1•muratsu•21m ago•1 comments

Race Toolkit

https://github.com/auracast-research/race-toolkit
2•sva_•21m ago•0 comments

Show HN: UpDown, Simple Website Uptime Checker

https://updown.fly.dev/
1•ejncman•22m ago•2 comments

Show HN: I Made a Tiny Stranger Things Game While Waiting for the Finale

https://www.strangerclicks.com
1•jeanmayer•23m ago•2 comments

Show HN: Turn Your Git Commits into Tweets

https://landkit.pro/git-to-tweet
1•nikhonit•23m ago•0 comments

Release age v1.3.0: post-quantum (and more)

https://github.com/FiloSottile/age/releases/tag/v1.3.0
2•todsacerdoti•26m ago•0 comments

7- and 14-segment fonts "DSEG"

https://www.keshikan.net/fonts.html
2•anigbrowl•30m ago•0 comments

Going back to go forwards and instruction design

https://lukes-blog.vercel.app/posts/011-reversion&instruction
1•octopls•38m ago•2 comments

The Dangers of SSL Certificates

https://surfingcomplexity.blog/2025/12/27/the-dangers-of-ssl-certificates/
2•azhenley•39m ago•1 comments

Floppy disk pre-paid cash card launched in Taiwan

https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/storage/floppy-disk-pre-paid-cash-card-launched-in-tai...
1•naves•39m ago•0 comments

Dinosaur Food: 100M year old foods we still eat today

https://borischerny.com/food/2022/01/17/Dinosaur-food.html
2•jxmorris12•41m ago•0 comments

Liberating Bluetooth on the ESP32

https://exquisite.tube/w/mEzF442Q4hUXnhQ8HmfZuq
1•todsacerdoti•42m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Namebump is a registrationless, KVS. Unused names are bumped overtime

https://github.com/robertsdotpm/namebump
1•Uptrenda•42m ago•0 comments

W6LG – Silent Key

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIvZd71xOQM
1•jayknight•46m ago•1 comments

macOS Tahoe Bug Causes Studio Display Flickering Issues

https://www.macrumors.com/2025/12/18/macos-tahoe-studio-display-flickering/
1•tosh•46m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Twine – A tool to dynamically trace calls in production Elixir systems

https://github.com/ollien/twine
1•birdculture•47m ago•1 comments

44% of Gnome Core Apps Are Written in C, 13% in JavaScript and 10% in Rust

https://www.phoronix.com/news/GNOME-2025-Code-Stats
1•mikece•47m ago•0 comments

I'm bored, what should I build?

1•SpyCoder77•48m ago•4 comments

39C3: To sign or not to sign: Practical vulnerabilities in GPG and friends [video]

https://media.ccc.de/v/39c3-to-sign-or-not-to-sign-practical-vulnerabilities-i
1•todsacerdoti•50m ago•0 comments

Mapping of preprocessed source code to original source code

https://patents.google.com/patent/US20250306875A1/en
1•marcopolis•51m ago•0 comments
Open in hackernews

The Emacs Widget Toolkit

https://appetrosyan.github.io/posts/emacs-widget.html
48•signa11•7mo ago

Comments

spit2wind•7mo 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•7mo 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•7mo ago
Somewhat off topic, but I love all the references to Led Zeppelin’s incredible song, Stairway to Heaven.
gudzpoz•7mo 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•7mo 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•7mo ago
Why did you delete the page?
appetrosyan•7mo ago
Didn't. I migrated to `hugo` and it trims off the `.html` at the end. The permalink is the same.
matt-attack•7mo 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•7mo ago
PSA: Use The Lucid Toolkit https://irreal.org/blog/?p=12672

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

appetrosyan•7mo ago
That's the best thing to do for the moment.
robobro•7mo ago
404

Page Not Found

Sorry, this page does not exist.

You can head back to the homepage.

appetrosyan•7mo ago
Hi. I just migrated my blog to Hugo yesterday. The correct link is:

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