Protesilaos Stavrou

Emacs: pulsar version 1.3.0

This is a small Emacs package that automatically highlights the current line after certain functions are invoked. It can also highlight a line or region on demand. The idea is to make it easier to find where the point is, what was affected, and also to bring attention to something in a buffer. Watch the original demo (2022-03-14).

Below are the release notes.

Version 1.3.0 on 2025-11-30

This version introduces a new feature and makes small refinements to an already reliable base.

Permanent static highlight for a line or region

In the most common use-case, Pulsar produces a highlight that fades in and out of view after a certain amount of time. The idea with such a “pulse effect” is to quickly get a sense of where the cursor is when some change occurs (e.g. switching to another window).

The permanent static highlights differ from pulse effects in two ways: (i) they do not have a fade-in and fade-out phase and (ii) are not removed automatically. These highlights stick around either until the user removes them or their underlying text is deleted. They are meant to be used as intentional highlights, such as to draw attention to a certain statement while doing a presentation.

The command pulsar-highlight-permanently adds a permanent static highlight to the current line. When the region is active, the highlight is applied from the beginning to the end of the region.

The command pulsar-highlight-permanently-remove removes permanent static highlights from the active region or current line. This command operates on the entire buffer when it is called with a universal prefix argument (C-u by default).

The command pulsar-highlight-permanently-dwim adds a permanent static highlight if there is none or removes it if there is one. It operates on the currently active region or line at point.

Permanent static highlights are rendered with the face specified in the user option pulsar-highlight-face.

New name for temporary static highlights

The commands pulsar-highlight-dwim and pulsar-highlight-line are obsolete aliases for pulsar-highlight-temporarily.

Temporary static highlights do not have a fade-in and fade-out phase. They are automatically removed as soon as an action occurs. They are an alternative to the aforementioned permanent static highlights.

The command pulsar-highlight-temporarily will operate on the active region or the current line.

Miscellaneous

  • Thanks to Koloszár Gergely for reporting an intermediate bug where the pulse effect actually did not pulse under certain conditions. This was done in issue 31: https://github.com/protesilaos/pulsar/issues/31.

  • Parts of the code are rewritten in the interest of clarity.

  • The entire manual is redone to better organise the documentation.

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