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+title: Ligature Emulation in Emacs
+date: 2017-05-04
+
+Monday was (yet another)
+[NixOS hackathon][hackathon] at [OpenLab Augsburg][ola].
+[Maximilian][mhuber] was there and to my amazement
+he got working ligatures in his Haskell files in Emacs! Ever since Hasklig
+updated its format to use ligatures and private Unicode code points a while ago,
+the hack I had used in my config stopped working.
+
+Encouraged by that I decided to take a look on Tuesday. Long story short, I was
+able to [get it working in a pretty satisfying way][done].
+
+[hackathon]: https://www.meetup.com/Munich-NixOS-Meetup/events/239077247/
+[mhuber]: https://github.com/maximilianhuber
+[ola]: https://openlab-augsburg.de
+[done]: https://github.com/i-tu/Hasklig/issues/84#issuecomment-298803495
+
+What’s left to do is package it into a module and push to melpa.
+
+
+### elisp still sucks, but it’s bearable, sometimes
+
+I’m the kind of person who, when trying to fix something elisp related, normally
+gives up two hours later and three macro calls deep. Yes, homoiconic,
+non-lexically-scoped, self-rewriting code is not exactly my fetish.
+This time the task and the library (`prettify-symbols-mode`) were simple enough
+for that to not happen.
+
+Some interesting technical trivia:
+
+- elisp literal character syntax is `?c`. `?\t` is the tab character
+- You join characters by `(string c1 c2 c3 ...)`
+- [dash.el][dash] is pretty awesome and does what a functional programmer
+  expects. Also, Rainbow Dash.
+- Hasklig and FiraCode multi-column symbols actually [only occupy one column, on
+  the far right of the glyph][glyph]. `my-correct-symbol-bounds` fixes emacs’
+  rendering in that case.
+
+
+[dash]: https://github.com/magnars/dash.el
+[glyph]: https://github.com/tonsky/FiraCode/issues/211#issuecomment-239082368
+
+
+## Appendix A
+
+For reference, here’s the complete code as it stands now. Feel free to paste
+into your config; let’s make it [MIT][mit]. Maybe link to this site, in case there are
+updates.
+
+[mit]: https://opensource.org/licenses/MIT
+
+```elisp
+ (defun my-correct-symbol-bounds (pretty-alist)
+    "Prepend a TAB character to each symbol in this alist,
+this way compose-region called by prettify-symbols-mode
+will use the correct width of the symbols
+instead of the width measured by char-width."
+    (mapcar (lambda (el)
+              (setcdr el (string ?\t (cdr el)))
+              el)
+            pretty-alist))
+
+  (defun my-ligature-list (ligatures codepoint-start)
+    "Create an alist of strings to replace with
+codepoints starting from codepoint-start."
+    (let ((codepoints (-iterate '1+ codepoint-start (length ligatures))))
+      (-zip-pair ligatures codepoints)))
+
+  ; list can be found at https://github.com/i-tu/Hasklig/blob/master/GlyphOrderAndAliasDB#L1588
+  (setq my-hasklig-ligatures
+    (let* ((ligs '("&&" "***" "*>" "\\\\" "||" "|>" "::"
+                   "==" "===" "==>" "=>" "=<<" "!!" ">>"
+                   ">>=" ">>>" ">>-" ">-" "->" "-<" "-<<"
+                   "<*" "<*>" "<|" "<|>" "<$>" "<>" "<-"
+                   "<<" "<<<" "<+>" ".." "..." "++" "+++"
+                   "/=" ":::" ">=>" "->>" "<=>" "<=<" "<->")))
+      (my-correct-symbol-bounds (my-ligature-list ligs #Xe100))))
+
+  ;; nice glyphs for haskell with hasklig
+  (defun my-set-hasklig-ligatures ()
+    "Add hasklig ligatures for use with prettify-symbols-mode."
+    (setq prettify-symbols-alist
+          (append my-hasklig-ligatures prettify-symbols-alist))
+    (prettify-symbols-mode))
+
+  (add-hook 'haskell-mode-hook 'my-set-hasklig-ligatures)
+```
+
+## Appendix B (Update 1): FiraCode integration
+
+I also created a mapping for [FiraCode][fira]. You need to grab the [additional
+symbol font][symbol] that adds (most) ligatures to the unicode private use area.
+Consult your system documentation on how to add it to your font cache.
+Next add `"Fira Code"` and `"Fira Code Symbol"` to your font preferences. Symbol
+only contains the additional characters, so you need both.
+
+If you are on NixOS, the font package should be on the main branch shortly, [I
+added a package][symbol-pkg].
+
+[fira]: https://github.com/tonsky/FiraCode/
+[symbol]: https://github.com/tonsky/FiraCode/issues/211#issuecomment-239058632
+[symbol-pkg]: https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/25517
+
+Here’s the mapping adjusted for FiraCode:
+
+```elisp
+  (setq my-fira-code-ligatures
+    (let* ((ligs '("www" "**" "***" "**/" "*>" "*/" "\\\\" "\\\\\\"
+                  "{-" "[]" "::" ":::" ":=" "!!" "!=" "!==" "-}"
+                  "--" "---" "-->" "->" "->>" "-<" "-<<" "-~"
+                  "#{" "#[" "##" "###" "####" "#(" "#?" "#_" "#_("
+                  ".-" ".=" ".." "..<" "..." "?=" "??" ";;" "/*"
+                  "/**" "/=" "/==" "/>" "//" "///" "&&" "||" "||="
+                  "|=" "|>" "^=" "$>" "++" "+++" "+>" "=:=" "=="
+                  "===" "==>" "=>" "=>>" "<=" "=<<" "=/=" ">-" ">="
+                  ">=>" ">>" ">>-" ">>=" ">>>" "<*" "<*>" "<|" "<|>"
+                  "<$" "<$>" "<!--" "<-" "<--" "<->" "<+" "<+>" "<="
+                  "<==" "<=>" "<=<" "<>" "<<" "<<-" "<<=" "<<<" "<~"
+                  "<~~" "</" "</>" "~@" "~-" "~=" "~>" "~~" "~~>" "%%"
+                  "x" ":" "+" "+" "*")))
+      (my-correct-symbol-bounds (my-ligature-list ligs #Xe100))))
+```