28 lines
2.7 KiB
Org Mode
28 lines
2.7 KiB
Org Mode
#+TITLE: Deploying evil-hl-line and highly visual indicators
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#+DATE: 2026-05-12
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* TL;DR
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I just released a public Emacs package, `evil-hl-line`, that adds a bright line‑highlight to indicate the current Evil state. [[https://github.com/anerisgreat/evil-hl-line][GitHub]]
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* Why I made this package
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I am an addicted evil-mode user. I mainlined vim (well, Neovim) and tmux for a year before switching to Emacs, so by the time I became enlightened I was set on using vim-style key bindings, and so I found myself to be an evil man.
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Early on in my vim journey I kept hitting the wrong keys because I was not sure what mode I was in. The same continued to happen in Emacs with Evil mode. Especially with many windows open, constantly changing modes and pages and tabs means constantly forgetting which mode I am in, and pressing the wrong keys, resulting in unwated consequences. I would start typing thinking I am in insert mode, and accidentally delete a few paragraphs! The time these mistakes waste is annoying, but the most frustrating part is the drailement of my train of thought.
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Of course, there already exists visual indicator that tells us which mode is active. In Emacs, using evil mode introduces a little text inside the mode line that says what the current mode is (In vim such a thing exists too, of course). Even with these, I still found myself using the wrong mode often.
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* A fix - highly visual indicators
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Just because something is visible doesn't mean it is seen. I don't think this is a controversial take by any means - but it often isn't taken into account when designing user interfaces.
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When using vim+tmux, one of the biggest problems was knowing which window I was in. I would start typing in one shell or window and realized that I completely trashed another window. My solution was to make the active buffer background brighter, so that at a glance it would be obvious which window was selected. Once moving to Emacs I had to settle for only changing the color of the mode line, along with using hl-line-mode. Either way - it worked. I was far less confused as to which window was receiving my inputs because of this journey.
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I think my main guide is this - information that is necessary to act on at high frequency needs to be shown very visibly. There is a clear benefit to making the current state of a system not only understandable, but _clearly obvious_ at a _glance_.
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Knowing this, it seemed only natural to fix the mode confusion with a very obvious indicator as to which mode I am in. I have been using some version of =evil-hl-line= for a while, and am very pleased with the results.
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If you use evil mode in Emacs, I think you may find this approach helpful, and I hope you will find this package useful!
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