Spacious Padding: Increase the padding/spacing of frames and windows

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Spacious Padding: Increase the padding/spacing of frames and windows

Copyright (C) 2023 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.3 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, with the Front-Cover Texts being “A GNU Manual,” and with the Back-Cover Texts as in (a) below. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled “GNU Free Documentation License.”

(a) The FSF’s Back-Cover Text is: “You have the freedom to copy and modify this GNU manual.”

This manual, written by Protesilaos Stavrou, describes the customization options for the Emacs package called spacious-padding (or ‘spacious-padding.el’), and provides every other piece of information pertinent to it.

The documentation furnished herein corresponds to stable version 0.5.0, released on 2024-04-29. Any reference to a newer feature which does not yet form part of the latest tagged commit, is explicitly marked as such.

Current development target is 0.6.0-dev.

If you are viewing the README.org version of this file, please note that the GNU ELPA machinery automatically generates an Info manual out of it.


1 Overview

The spacious-padding-mode increases the space or padding around several elements of the Emacs interface, such as window dividers, the internal frame border, the padding of the mode line, and more. The idea is to produce a more comfortable presentation.


1.1 Set the exact spacing values

The user option spacious-padding-widths defines the values associated with each element of the Emacs interface.

This is a plist of the form ‘(:key1 value1 :key2 value2)’. The value is always a natural number or nil (in which case a safe default value is used). Keys are keywords among the following:

  • :internal-border-width refers to the space between the boundaries of the Emacs frame and where the text contents start.
  • :right-divider-width is the space between two side-by-side windows. If the value is less than 1, the border is not hidden when spacious-padding-mode is enabled.
  • :fringe-width applies to the fringes on either side of the window. The more specific keys :left-fringe-width and :right-fringe-wdith can be used for finer control. If those are not specified (or set to a nil value), they fall back to :fringe-width. (The fringes are the window sides where line wrapping and other indicators are displayed).
  • :tab-width concerns the padding around buttons of all tabbed interfaces (tab-bar-mode, tab-line-mode).
  • :tab-bar-width concerns the padding around buttons of the tab-bar-mode. If not specified (or set to nil) it uses the value of :tab-width.
  • :tab-line-width concerns the padding around buttons of the tab-line. If not specified (or set to nil) it uses the value of :tab-width.
  • :header-line-width, mode-line-width, scroll-bar-width point to the header-line, mode-line, and scroll-bar, respectively.

1.2 Make the mode line subtle

By default, spacious-padding-mode does not refashion the mode lines other than adding to them some extra padding (Set the exact spacing values). The user option spacious-padding-subtle-mode-line does change the mode lines so that instead of a background they only have an overline, while preserving whatever padding is in effect.

The value bound to spacious-padding-subtle-mode-line is either a boolean type or a plist. If it is non-nil, use the foreground of the underlying mode line face to derive the color of the overline.

If the non-nil value is a plist read the following keys to determine the exact style of the overlines.

  • :mode-line-active refers to the active/current mode line.
  • :mode-line-inactive refers to the inactive/non-current mode lines.

Each key accepts either a face or a string representing a color as its associated value:

  • The face is an unquoted symbol, such as success or shadow, whose ‘:foreground’ attribute is queried to extract the desired color value.
  • The color is a name among those listed in the output of the command list-colors-display or a hexadecimal RGB value, such as ‘#123456’.

If the key is missing or its value is not one of the above, fall back to reading the foreground of the underlying mode line face to determine the color of the overline.

Examples of valid configurations:

;; Use the foreground of the underlying mode line face to determine
;; the color of the overline (e.g. the inactive mode line has gray
;; text, so render the overline in the same gray).
(setq spacious-padding-subtle-mode-line t)

;; Use the foreground of the `error' face (typically a red hue) for
;; the active mode line's overline.  For the inactive mode line, fall
;; back to the foreground color of the underlying face (as in the case
;; of the t shown above).
(setq spacious-padding-subtle-mode-line
      '(:mode-line-active error))

;; As above, but now use the foreground of the `shadow' face for the
;; inactive mode line.
(setq spacious-padding-subtle-mode-line
      '(:mode-line-active error :mode-line-inactive shadow))

;; Use color values directly.
(setq spacious-padding-subtle-mode-line
      '(:mode-line-active "#0000ff" :mode-line-inactive "gray50"))

2 Installation


2.1 GNU ELPA package

The package is available as spacious-padding. Simply do:

M-x package-refresh-contents
M-x package-install

And search for it.

GNU ELPA provides the latest stable release. Those who prefer to follow the development process in order to report bugs or suggest changes, can use the version of the package from the GNU-devel ELPA archive. Read: https://protesilaos.com/codelog/2022-05-13-emacs-elpa-devel/.


Previous: , Up: Installation   [Index]

2.2 Manual installation

Assuming your Emacs files are found in ‘~/.emacs.d/’, execute the following commands in a shell prompt:

cd ~/.emacs.d

# Create a directory for manually-installed packages
mkdir manual-packages

# Go to the new directory
cd manual-packages

# Clone this repo, naming it "spacious-padding"
git clone https://git.sr.ht/~protesilaos/spacious-padding spacious-padding

Finally, in your ‘init.el’ (or equivalent) evaluate this:

;; Make Elisp files in that directory available to the user.
(add-to-list 'load-path "~/.emacs.d/manual-packages/spacious-padding")

Everything is in place to set up the package.


3 Sample configuration

(require 'spacious-padding)

;; These are the default values, but I keep them here for visibility.
(setq spacious-padding-widths
      '( :internal-border-width 15
         :header-line-width 4
         :mode-line-width 6
         :tab-width 4
         :right-divider-width 30
         :scroll-bar-width 8
         :fringe-width 8))

;; Read the doc string of `spacious-padding-subtle-mode-line' as it
;; is very flexible and provides several examples.
(setq spacious-padding-subtle-mode-line
      `( :mode-line-active 'default
         :mode-line-inactive vertical-border))

(spacious-padding-mode 1)

;; Set a key binding if you need to toggle spacious padding.
(define-key global-map (kbd "<f8>") #'spacious-padding-mode)

4 Acknowledgements

spacious-padding is meant to be a collective effort. Every bit of help matters.

Author/maintainer

Protesilaos Stavrou.

Contributions to code or the manual

Lucas Gruss, Neo Dim, Ruby Iris Juric.

Ideas and/or user feedback

Aronne Raimondi, Damien Cassou, Julian Flake, Lucas Gruss, Nicolas Semrau, Pierre Baille, Stefano Rodighiero, Tobias Tschinkowitz, Tomasz Hołubowicz, domsch1988, tusharhero.

Inspiration for this package comes from Nicolas Rougier’s impressive designs and Daniel Mendler’s org-modern package:

  1. https://github.com/rougier
  2. https://github.com/minad/org-modern

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B Indices


Next: , Up: Indices   [Index]

B.1 Function index

Jump to:   S  
Index Entry  Section

S
spacious-padding-mode: Overview

Jump to:   S  

Next: , Previous: , Up: Indices   [Index]

B.2 Variable index

Jump to:   S  
Index Entry  Section

S
spacious-padding-subtle-mode-line: Make the mode line subtle
spacious-padding-widths: Set the exact spacing values

Jump to:   S  

Previous: , Up: Indices   [Index]

B.3 Concept index

Jump to:   C   I   P  
Index Entry  Section

C
Contributors: Acknowledgements

I
Installation instructions: Installation

P
Package configuration: Sample configuration

Jump to:   C   I   P