---
layout: post-plain
title:  "Aquamacs - An Emacs for MacOS"
date:  2020-10-22 10:00 +0800
categories: design
---
<div style="margin-bottom: 4em">{% asset "Aquamacs_PostHeader_201117_v01-02.png" 
   @optim
   srcset:width=900
   srcset:width=500
   srcset:width=300
 %}</div>

> **EDIT:** Syke! I now use [emacs-mac](https://bitbucket.org/mituharu/emacs-mac) because it plays better with the tiling window manager, [Yabai](https://github.com/koekeishiya/yabai).

Emacs is great. After using the MacOS carbon version of Emacs for about a year, I've come to depend on Org-mode as a second brain. It's become the place where I store notes, plan work and track my progress toward personal goals. Why would you want to use a text editor as an organizer? I'm by no means a coder. I do however, tinker and take things apart (without intending to put them back together). Emacs feels like its built for this purpose, not like it's pushing me toward publishing code.

I came to Emacs via Vim and though the keys aren't nearly as natural, I was surprised to find that emacs editing keys are usable in most regular text editing in MacOS. After figuring out the standard bindings, the speed of all my text editing increased, not just when working in Emacs.

[Aquamacs](http://aquamacs.org/) is coming from the other direction - building in better integration with MacOS's keybindings and playing nicely with MacOS's Finder. There is, however one major issue - it is an ugly child. Aquamacs isn't so pretty out of the box. The garish toolbar and tabs can be easily hidden with `(tool-bar-mode 0)` and `(tabbar-mode 0)` in the config file, and I hastily installed the [sanityinc-tomorrow themes](https://github.com/purcell/color-theme-sanityinc-tomorrow) to sooth my burning eyes, but It's goofy gnu icon still stared into me with it's sad black eyes whenever I hit ⌘-Tab.

{% asset "Aquamacs_Dock_02_201022.png" %}

I had a few free minutes the next morning to mock up an alternative icon which sits a bit nicer next to its friends:

{% asset "Aquamacs_Dock_01_201022.png" %}

I originally planned to recreate the 'Gnu in water' icon in a cleaner style but it was easier to follow Andrew Zhilin's stylized Gnu horns. The icons are available as .png images below. How to change an application icon on mac is [explained here](https://www.howtogeek.com/677739/how-to-change-app-file-and-folder-icons-on-mac/).

<div style="display: flex;">
<a href="{% asset "Aquamacs_AltLogo_201117_v02-03.png" @path %}">{% asset "Aquamacs_AltLogo_201117_v02-03.png" %}</a>
<a href="{% asset "Aquamacs_AltLogo_201117_v02-02.png" @path %}">{% asset "Aquamacs_AltLogo_201117_v02-02.png" %}</a>
<a href="{% asset "Aquamacs_AltLogo_201117_v02-04.png" @path %}">{% asset "Aquamacs_AltLogo_201117_v02-04.png" %}</a>
<a href="{% asset "Aquamacs_AltLogo_201117_v02-01.png" @path %}">{% asset "Aquamacs_AltLogo_201117_v02-01.png" %}</a>
</div>

If you're a townie or other tilde user who wants some small graphics for a project, or you want to collaborate, send me a message on irc or tilde.town email!
