GUI - Emacs Looks Cool

Fonts

I use the Adobe’s Source Code Pro font, it is Monospaced font and claimed to be suitable for coding environments but I use it for all modes.

;; (set-frame-font "Source Code Pro-11" nil t)
;; (set-face-attribute 'default nil :height 100)

Minimalists GUI

I never click any buttons in the tool-bar, nor need the scroll-bar to tell me the cursor position the in the buffer, so I removed all of them to have minimalist GUI of Emacs.

Recently I found menu-bar is really useful, it shows commonly used functions for a particular mode. Occasionally I found something useful.

(tool-bar-mode -1)
; (menu-bar-mode -1)
(scroll-bar-mode -1)

Theme

I have been using zenburn theme for a while. It is a popular low contrast colour theme and easy on the eye. Occasionally I apply tsdh-dark theme on the top when I really need to focus on.

leuven theme is highly customised for org-mode and I like to use it when my eyes are tired of the zenburn theme.

;; (load-theme 'zenburn t)
;; (load-theme 'leuven t)

Mode Line

The mode line is at the bottom of every Emacs Window aside from MiniBuffer windows. It has most of the relevant information about the buffer, including Git status, Major mode, clock info, etc.

The smart-mode-line packages can make mode-line “smart and sexy”. There are many options to tweak.

(setq sml/no-confirm-load-theme t)
(require 'smart-mode-line)
(setq powerline-arrow-shape 'curve)
(setq powerline-default-separator-dir '(right . left))
(setq sml/theme 'powerline)
(sml/setup)

There are too much information cluttered at the bottom. I disable the display of minor modes, there are just too many and almost all are irrelevant.

(rich-minority-mode 1)
(setf rm-blacklist "")

This will leave empty spaces which can be removed by

(setq sml/mode-width 0)
(setq sml/name-width 20)

Finally, show the current time in the mode-line.

(display-time-mode)