Version 1.4.0 of package Pulsar has just been released in GNU ELPA. You can now find it in M-x list-packages RET.
Pulsar describes itself as: =================================================== Pulse highlight on demand or after select functions =================================================== More at https://elpa.gnu.org/packages/pulsar.html ## Summary: ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ PULSAR.EL: HIGHLIGHT LINE AUTOMATICALLY AFTER SOME CHANGE OR ON DEMAND Protesilaos [email protected] ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ This manual, written by Protesilaos, describes the customization options for `pulsar' (or `pulsar.el'), and provides every other piece of information pertinent to it. The documentation furnished herein corresponds to stable version 1.4.0, released on 2026-07-22. Any reference to a newer feature which does not yet form part of the latest tagged commit, is explicitly marked as such. Current development target is 1.5.0-dev. ## Recent NEWS: ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ CHANGE LOG OF PULSAR.EL ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ The newest release is at the top. For further details, please consult the manual: <https://protesilaos.com/emacs/pulsar>. Table of Contents ───────────────── Version 1.4.0 on 2026-07-22 Version 1.4.0 on 2026-07-22 ═══════════════════════════ This version fixes a few bugs and brings quality-of-life improvements to an already stable package. Correctly pulse the full line even in `M-x shell' and related ───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── In certain buffers, we cannot use regular motions to reach a portion of text. This is done by text properties that make the propertized text inaccessible. One use-case is to prevent the user from deleting the shell prompt in `M-x shell'. Pulsar is now designed to handle `inhibit-field-text-motion' correctly so that it works as intended in all relevant cases. Thanks to Jake Miles for telling me that the shell buffer was not pulsing, which made me investigate the underlying problem. This was done in issue 40: <https://github.com/protesilaos/pulsar/issues/40>. The pulsing behaviour of Evil commands is more refined ────────────────────────────────────────────────────── In short: • editing commands should pulse the region, not the entire line; • `evil-delete-char' should not produce a pulse; • `evil-delete-marks' is not an editing command, as it removes invisible marks from the buffer. Thanks to Steven Allen from modifying the relevant variables in pull request 39: <https://github.com/protesilaos/pulsar/pull/39>. Steven has assigned copyright to the Free Software Foundation. Also thanks to Javier Pacheco for adding more Evil-related commands to the list, in pull requests 37 and 38: • <https://github.com/protesilaos/pulsar/pull/37> • <https://github.com/protesilaos/pulsar/pull/38> The `pulsar-face' is no longer hardcoded in one case ──────────────────────────────────────────────────── It is always meant to be a variable, specifically a user option, meaning that we want to use its value as defined by the user. Thanks to irisjae for reporting the bug in issue 36: <https://github.com/protesilaos/pulsar/issues/36>. Pulsing is done correctly on the TTY and other frames ───────────────────────────────────────────────────── The technicalities are covered in issue 33: <https://github.com/protesilaos/pulsar/issues/33>. Thanks to the participation of Sébastien Delafond who provided feedback about their Emacs environment and helped me test the snippets I had provided. In a TTY we cannot use what we normally do, so I arrange for a standard colour to be used instead. My rationale for the choice of colour is this: • we are in an environment which does not guarantee accurate colour reproduction; • it is almost a given that the frame supports at least 8 colours; • of those 8 colours we have black, red, green, yellow, blue, magenta, cyan, white; • excluding black and white, the colour that contrasts best against both black and white is red; • picking red means we do not need to know the background-mode of the frame, which saves us the extra computations. The contrast table for the six colours, using Org, where `Λ' is an alias for `modus-themes-contrast': ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ #000000 #ffffff ─────────────────────────── #ff0000 5.25 4.00 #00ff00 15.30 1.37 #0000ff 2.44 8.59 #ffff00 19.56 1.07 #ff00ff 6.70 3.14 #00ffff 16.75 1.25 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Pulsing is consistent even when the Emacs daemon is involved ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── In short, things should work as intended in all sorts of configurations. Thanks to Koloszár Gergely, Mehrad Mahmoudian, and Nikolaos … …
