hightlight-tail

Draw a colourful "tail" while you write.

I have encountered some issues using it with emacs 26 or 27, but the original author seems not maintaining it any more. This is a fork from its last available version 1.3.9.

WHAT IS IT?

This minor-mode draws a tail in real time, when you write. It changes the background color of some last typed characters and smoothly fade them out to the background color.

So from now on, your Emacs will be even more sexy! ;o )

If you do not understand what I mean, check the animation: demo

INSTALLATION

Place this file in your load-path and add

(require 'highlight-tail)
(message "Highlight-tail loaded - now your Emacs will be even more sexy!")
;
; [ here some setq of variables - see CONFIGURATION section below ]
;
(highlight-tail-mode)

to your ~/.emacs

CONFIGURATION

The default configuration is quite good, but you could and should customize it to your own needs. Here are some examples. It's hard for me to explain what you will see when use them, so just give them a try. Place these setq in your .emacs.el file before the (highlight-tail-mode) function call.

(setq highlight-tail-colors '(("black" . 0)
                            ("#bc2525" . 25)
                            ("black" . 66)))

(setq highlight-tail-steps 14
    highlight-tail-timer 1)

(setq highlight-tail-posterior-type 'const)

These are all customizable variables. I think you get the idea how to customize this mode for best fit.

ATTENTION

You will often need to run (highlight-tail-reload) function to make changes work :).

SPEED

From version 0.8 this mode doesn't use much CPU power. There were problems with this in earlier versions. Now it takes about 2-8% of my Athlon XP 2000+ power in normal speed typing (maybe it is still too much? - if you have suggestions how to make it eat less - mail me). When I press a key and hold it down it eats approximately 15% (in comparison to prior version (100%) it is a very good result). The CPU eaten depends mainly on two variables: highlight-tail-steps' andhighlight-tail-timer'. So combine with these two to achieve satisfactory performance.

Terminals

Highlight-tail doesn't work on terminals (only in window-systems like X11)

xwl / hightlight-tail