bad.el boxing after dark

This is the home of bad.el, boxing after dark, which is an Emacs Lisp graphics program for GNU Emacs. It comes with a drawing program, the studio, plus ascii games and interactive demos.

the studio, drawing program

the bad.el studio drawing program for GNU Emacs

The bad.el studio is a drawing program for GNU Emacs.

control alpha, draw mock GUIs

bad.el runs on top of Emacs but doesn't look like it.

image: SDXL

import ascii art, rotate

Imported ascii drawings, building a shelf and a table. The shelf, not accidentally so.

import images, show parts

This is the `defun' of my life.

image: SDXL

program: bad-studio

The studio running in a no-graphics terminal, showing how the poor man's transparency works in mysterious ways.

At the opposite end: running in kitty, that only runs in X.

ascii art, ansi colors

the bad.el editor with colorful abstract ascii art

Ascii art produced with the bad.el interactive editor that still has many features yet to be implemented.

demo 2: bad-draw-here

unconfigured Emacs with the same ascii art inserted thrice

A minimal demo of bad.el. Draw ascii art in and from Lisp, insert the result in a buffer.

demo 3: bad-egypt

ascii art: a pyramid in a box over a gradient background

This isn't just another demo.

ascii pyramid: __20h__
gradient: color.el by Drew Adams & Julien Danjou

ascii game 1: bad-toronto

ascii game showing the skyline of Toronto

An animated ascii game with a puzzle to be solved. The skyline of Toronto in a new version of an old work.

original ascii art: jgs

ascii game 2: bad-snake

the legendary binary cat, ascii snake game in Emacs

for whom the bell ... ascii snake game in Emacs level 3

The familiar snake game, looking unfamiliar.

ascii art: josuah

demo 4: bad-grad

It is known that in ancient Egypt, they used 3D geometry and algebra. But could they also have used computing, even programming?

demo 5: bad-maple

Inspired by the 1985 game Déjà Vu.

image: Dalle

TODO

If you'd like to contribute to bad.el, there are many areas where it can be improved.

Performance.
Instead of just drawing everything and see what comes up on top, one could have a more clever algorithm where everyone first expressed their interests - I would like to draw this, here, etc - however after all that the algorithm would compute the big picture and just draw the minimum necessary to produce the final output. This will be, possibly, much faster. For example, it wouldn't draw a box positioned underneath another (opaque) box, as that would be overwritten anyway.
Old news! But I'm sure it can run much faster still; see this.
Studio interface.
- many basic features are not implemented
- mouse support is at a proof-of-concept level
- the interface relies on cycling and randomizing
- it isn't integrated with Emacs idioms, e.g. `C-u'

requirements

bad.el -

requires GNU Emacs 29 or later
is tested on Debian GNU/Linux and OpenBSD
works well in xterm, fbterm, and kitty

resources

Here are a bunch of resources from other Emacs projects as I stumble upon them or people tell me about them - new items are appended, so it isn't sorted other than that.

I'm happy to integrate awesome features and neat modules into bad.el.
neat means one is able to call a function, be it a `defun' or `cl-defmethod', and something interesting immediately happens - this is by far the best way. The second best way is: one is able to call a function, then useful and/or interesting data is returned for further inspection 😄

bad-2: speed kills

CL and Elisp and drawing the dark and light ansi color cubes

I'm currently working on a minimal [1] version of bad-el. This version already runs much faster thanks to more cognitive algorithms for drawing. But this isn't yet a release. I have other ideas before it skyrockets.

bad hand notes

[1]

Minimal software isn't longer than
8 files * 256 lines/file =
2^3 files * 2^(2^3) lines/file =
2^(3 + 2^3) = 2^(3 + 8) = 2^11 =
2048 lines. But this software doesn't qualify. Maybe I could make pass as not minimal but small software, where the same rules would apply only not for 2^3 but for 2^4, which would mean not more than 2^4 = 16 files with each no longer than 2^(2^4) = 65 536 lines.

Thanks for reading this far! See you around 😄
do send a: mail
updated: 2025-01-16
start over