bug#1305: All code that currently beeps should use visual bell instead

[Lars Ingebrigtsen]

Stefan Kangas <stefan@marxist.se> writes:

>> As somebody else noted earlier, if you have visible-bell on, but use
>> "-nw", that's the only notification you get -- there's no visible bell
>> on the console.  So you could say that there's some precedence for using
>> just the echo area as the only notification mechanism (beyond apparently
>> all the popular Emacs distributions doing exactly that).
>
> True.  You have my vote, FWIW.

I'm not really advocating anything in particular here.  :-)  I'm just
trying to get a clearer overview of what the current situation really
is, and what options are available to us.

I think it's clear that we can't just flip `visible-bell' on -- that
will be annoying to a substantial number of people (who currently have
neither beeping nor a visible bell).

I think, perhaps, introducing a new visible bell (across all
significant system), that's considerably less intrusive than the ones we
have today on GNU/Linux and Macos, might be an option.  And then
defaulting to using that.

Gregory suggested blinking the cursor in a different colour -- perhaps?
Or something like the Macos blinker -- but as you suggest, a lot smaller
and of a much shorter duration.

-- 
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
   bloggy blog: http://lars.ingebrigtsen.no