So I have been having a lot of fun using Spacemacs (Emacs + Vim) lately as my new IDE. Its a game changer for sure. One thing I find particularly fun is the "pretty-mode" extensions I managed to program into it (had to write my own layer that I derived from some existing code). I'll explain each aspect of pretty-mode in a second but first check out some screen shots at the bottom of this post to see what it looks like.

If anyone wants to replicate my configuration the full setup is here: https://git.qoto.org/freemo/pretty-spacemacs

Pretty-git is the most functionally useful of them all. When you make a git commit it helps you format your git message using the standard format where you start with one keyword classifying the commit (such as fix, feature, refactor, etc) then a colon, then the text. It provides a list of selectable keywords and adds it to the git message. Moreover it can replace these keywords visually with descriptive icons (such as a little red bug for bug fixes). Later when you look through the git history you see these icons where the keywords should be making for a very nice visual representation.

My favorite is the pretty-code. Its a simple idea, it replaces certain keywords of phrases in code with equivelant mathematical symbols. So, for example null/nil/none will be replaced with the empty-set math symbol (a circle with a slash through it), similarlity stuff like not equals (!=) will be replace with an equals mark with a slash through it. You can fully customize what symbols are replaced and what it is replaced with. Also when you cursor over a symbol it temporarily reverts back to the keyword it replaced so you can see what it means. Searches and of course the underlying code itself (and in git) is unchanged.

pretty-shell is just a shell with some nice font-awesome fonts to make it pretty, usually informative so different icons might represent if a directory is a git repository or if it has staged changes and what not.

Finally pretty-outline. This basically just gives bullet points (useful in org-mode and note dating) some pretty icon representations rather than circles. Pure eye candy on this one.

#Emacs #Vim #Spacemacs #IDE #programming #CS #IT #coding #code