If you’re an Irreal regular, you’ve probably guessed that I’m a fan of Charles Choi and his work. He even got me to change my mind about using proportional text for writing blogs—an idea I was initially resistant to—and marginally improved my workflow.
One thing that we profoundly disagree on, though, is the use of menus and toolbars in Emacs. That’s because I view any use of a mouse as a failure while Choi is more flexible. He’s offered several suggestions that improve on the Emacs default menuing interface.
His latest offering is Calle 24 that provides a more pleasing set of icons for the Emacs tool bar on the Mac. Choi suggests that the reason virtually everybody recommends disabling the tool bar is because the icons are so ugly. He may be right. Regardless, I have never used the tool bar and always shudder when I see someone using it.
Still, the Emacs tent is a big one and there’s plenty of room for everyone, even those who like tool bars. If you do like tool bars and you are a Mac head, you may appreciate Choi’s package that brings Apple’s recommended tool bar icons to Emacs. Take a look at his post to see the new icons.
If you visit his Github site, you’ll discover where the name “Calle 24” came from.