The Entire Kitchen Sink

I’ve been doing various blogs where I’m reading old comics and then typing some random musings about them. I know, odd, right? Most of them have been about 80s American comics companies, because I think that was a pretty interesting era in comics, and because somebody should.

So I’ve now gotten to Kitchen Sink Comics/Comix/Press/Enterprises, and it’s probably going to be the last of these blog series… because I don’t think there’s any major alternative 80s publishers left that interest me?

And, of course, Kitchen got started in the 60s and lasted until the 90s, so this blog series is a bit more extensive chronologically.

Since this is going to be a long series (at least 200 posts), I’ve forked off yet another WordPress site: kitchen-sink.kwakk.info. Two reasons: It’s just nice to have a separate design and look, and… I’ll be covering titles like Bizarre Sex, and you know this is a family oriented blog! Good lord!

I’m aiming for a post per day, but there’s probably going to be some slippage, since some of the titles require extensive reading (I’m looking at you The Spirit).

So join me as I take a final trip back to olden comics days… or not. Up to you!

The Most Controversial Change In Emacs History

Just a scant handful of decades after XEmacs introduced a mode line with proportional fonts, we’re thinking about doing the same in Emacs.

Here’s how the mode line looks (by default) in Emacs 28:

Here’s how we’re considering having it look (by default) in Emacs 29:

See? Huge difference. Huge.

The attractive thing about this change is that, well, it’s prettier, but it’s also more consistent with the other elements at the margins of the Emacs frame: The menus and the toolbar have used proportional fonts for a long time, so doing the same in the mode line might also be nice. And you can generally squeeze in more information when using proportional fonts, which is helpful if you’re jamming a lot of stuff into the mode line:

Changing this has been brought up a number of times over the years, but there’s been pushback because some of the elements in the mode line are pretty dynamic, and it’d suck if everything moved around. For instance, when displaying the column number in the mode line, it might be annoying to have the rest of the line shift to the left/right when moving the cursor around in the window.

So we’ve now added a new display spec (called ‘min-width’) today that you can slap around bits of text (and in the mode line) that ensures that the width never decreases beyond a certain point.

Perhaps that’ll make a difference in the level of resistance? I guess we’ll find out, because starting today, we’re doing a one month long test on “master”: This new mode line look is enabled by default now, and in a month we’ll evaluate based on feedback.

So give it a whirl for a few weeks, and vote on emacs-devel mailing list. (And report any glitches, of course. And suggestions for improvements are always welcome.)