Drew Adams via "Bug reports for GNU Emacs, the Swiss army knife of text editors" writes: > I wrote: > >> When Emacs dings it's typically due to a user error. >> >> Where do you see the error message? In the echo area. >> >> Putting the attention-grabbing "flash" or whatever >> in the echo area draws your attention to it, where >> you see the msg telling you what happened. >> >> Why draw or keep the user's attention _away_ from >> that message? The user error might have little or >> nothing to do with the text at the cursor of the >> selected window. >> >> Draw the user's attention _from_ there to the helpful >> message. > > `visible-bell' has been around forever. Flashing > the entire frame (or as the Emacs manual says, "the > whole screen") is overkill, and it doesn't direct > your attention to the error message. Similar problem > with the alternatives I think you're considering, > even if they're less overkill than `visible-bell' > behavior. > > A modest attention-grabber, out of the way in the > echo area is better, IMO. I think these features could coexist together, it wouldn't hurt. Flash the mode (or header) line for bell it is something that people have wanted to have, see packages such as mode-line-bell, doom-themes (both in MELPA), and nano-bell. I made my own implementation of echo-bell: