Re: "Why is emacs so square?"

[Dmitry Gutov]

On 15.04.2020 17:31, Eli Zaretskii wrote:

> > I think the difficulty here is to look "contemporary" and yet fit every
> > platform Emacs is run on. Button widgets look different on each. Even
> > between GUI toolkits. And change between releases.
>
> There are only 2 variants: native buttons (provided by some toolkit)
> or the ones we draw ourselves.  And there's no requirement that they
> all look the same, I think: they should have the look-and-feel of the
> toolkit being used.

These are implementation options. But either the "ones we draw 
ourselves" are designed to fit each platform, or they looks the same 
across platforms, with our personal look.

The latter option is sometimes taken by professional applications in 
which the user spends most of their time (e.g. Blender, or at least some 
of it earlier versions that I've tried).

> > The other option, of course, is to look both modern and unique, but it's
> > a harder proposition, especially without a graphical designer on the
> > team. And this stuff gets outdated quickly.
>
> I think "modern and unique" is a contradiction of terms nowadays ;-)

In principle, I disagree. But it's difficult, and it's a balancing act, 
of course, between having them look distinct and interesting, but still 
familiar enough, and not too "tacky" (meaning, a design too exotic can 
become an eyesore after a while). It's a problem that bigger companies 
put whole design departments on.