Emacs: let's zoom

Arialdo Martini — 5/11/2024 — emacs lisp

Let’s develop squint a little package for controlling the font height, so you won’t need to squint your eyes when you are on smaller screens.
It will look like this:

It will give us the chance to touch on:

  • Face attributes.
  • Asking the user to choose interactively from a list of options.
  • The powerful consult--read.
  • Lisp’s Dynamic and Lexical Binding.
  • Few other little topics here and there.

Faces

In Emacs, the “face” is the visual styling attribute that can be applied to text: faces define how text appears on the screen, including the font, the colors, and the weight. And the height, the attribute we want to control in this little tutorial.

There is a notion of “default face” in Emacs: it’s basically the parent from which all the other faces inherit their attributes, unless they specify a specialization. Changing an attribute of the default face will propagate the change everywhere in Emacs.

Try yourself. Open your scratch buffer (M-x scratch-buffer RET) and write:

(face-attribute 'default :height)

Evaluate it: move right after the last ) and hit C-j (or M-x eval-print-last-sexp RET). This reveals the current height of the default face. In my case, it prints 180.

Good. Now, try to change it:

(set-face-attribute 'default nil :height 100)

Evaluate it: again, move right after the last ) and hit C-x C-e. As expected, any text in Emacs will inherit the new defined height.

Cool, you learnt how to programmatically control the global text height.
There are other attributes you can control, such as the foreground and background colors, the weight and the font. You can learn more about this topic from the chapter Faces in the Emacs Manual.
But let’s focus on height.

Controlling the current buffer faces

set-face-attribute operates globally. If you want to control the faces of the current buffer only, you need to play with remappings. I will skate over this topic, but just quickly:

(setq cookie
      (face-remap-add-relative 'default :height 280))

changes the height of the default face in the current buffer only. Indeed, it creates a remap of the face, that is a way to temporarily redirecting how a face is displayed.

It returns a cookie, that we save in the cookie variable. When you want to remove the remap, you have to provide that cookie to face-remap-remove-relative:

(face-remap-remove-relative cookie)

We won’t need to worry about this: our squint package will operate globally.

Controlling the height interactively

There are 2 ways for interactively modifying the size of characters on the screen:

Command Keybindings Description
(text-scale-adjust) C-x C-0
C-x C-=
C-x C--
C-x C-+
Adjust the font size in the current buffer
(global-text-scale-adjust) C-x C-M-0
C-x C-M--
C-x C-M-=
C-x C-M-+.
Adjust the font size in globally

They are straightforward to use: activate them, then follow the instructions on the screen, hitting:

Key Purpose
+ Increase the height
-, Decrease the height
0 Reset the height
ESC Quit the interactive session

That easy.

Grab your keeb

Enough with theory. Our goal is to create a new command, squint, offering a list of height presets to choose from interactively, with narrowing and realtime preview.

We will proceed incrementally, each time improving the result.

Step 1: set height from key/value pairs

The basic idea is to have a collection of heights in an alist (see Association Lists), that is a list of key-value pairs, such as:

(setq squint-heights
      '(("office" . 100)
        ("laptop" . 180)
        ("programming" . 200)
        ("presentation" . 300)))

and to set the corresponding height through its label, with:

(squint "presentation")
(squint "laptop")

It does not sound as a very challenging problem, does it? We need to define a function squint that:

  • Given a label, retrieves the corresponding height from squint-heights.
  • Once obtained the height, uses the set-face-attribute we saw before to adjust the font height.

Retrieving a value given a key from an alist is simply done with alist-get:

(alist-get "programming" squint-heights nil nil #'equal)

Here’s the signature:

(alist-get 
    KEY     ;; the key to search for
    ALIST   ;; the alist to search in
    DEFAULT ;; the value to return in case KEY is not found
    REMOVE  ;; whether the pair should be removed in case of success
    TESTFN) ;; the equality function to use for comparing keys

TESTFN defaults to eq, which is a bit unfortunate: eq does not return true if the two args are equal, but only if they are the very same Lisp object. In other words,

(eq "ciao" "ciao")

is false: although the 2 strings are equal, they are not the same object.
This:

(setq ciao "ciao")
(eq ciao ciao)

returns true.
Instead of eq we’d better use equal which, more conveniently, returns true if two objects have similar structure and contents.
Since TESTFN is a positional parameter, we are also forced to provide 2 nil values for the other parameters DEFAULT and REMOVE.

That’s all you need to know to finally define:

(setq squint-heights
      '(("office" . 100)
        ("laptop" . 180)
        ("programming" . 200)
        ("presentation" . 300)))

(defun squint (label)
  "Adjust font height based on predefined settings.
LABEL is a string that corresponds to a key in `squint-heights'."
  (let ((height (alist-get label squint-heights nil nil #'equal)))
    (set-face-attribute 'default nil :height height)))

Evaluate the code above (C-x C-e after each expression), then run:

(squint "presentation")

Such a large font! Sweet!

Step 2: symbols instead of strings

The quirk about using equal can be avoided using symbols (such as 'office and 'laptop) instead of strings such as "office" and "laptop".

With strings one must be careful when to use eq and when to use equal:

Expression Value Comment
(eq "office" "office") nil Although equal, the 2 are different objects.
(equal "office" "office") t equal compares the value.

With symbols, equality is much easier:

Expression Value Comment
(eq 'office 'office) t All symbols called 'office are the very same instance.
(equal 'office 'office) t 'office’s value is 'office, so equal is true too.

Let’s try redefining squint-heights using symbols instead of strings for its keys:

(setq squint-heights
      '((office . 100)
        (laptop . 180)
        (programming . 200)
        (presentation . 300)))

The usage of alist-get is a bit shorter:

(alist-get 'programming squint-heights)

Notice the use of 'programming instead of "programming".
This leads to the following simplified implementation:

(setq squint-heights
      '((office . 100)
        (laptop . 180)
        (programming . 190)
        (presentation . 200)))

(defun squint (label)
  "Adjust font height based on predefined settings.
LABEL is a symbol that corresponds to a key in `squint-heights'."
  (let ((height (alist-get label squint-heights)))
    (set-face-attribute 'default nil :height height)))

Invoke it with:

(squint 'presentation)

Still works.

Step 3 - Helper functions

Indulge me while I extract a few private functions. They will come in handy when we will change the behavior in the next steps.
In:

(defun squint (label)
  "Adjust font height based on predefined settings.
LABEL is a symbol that corresponds to a key in `squint-heights'."
  (let ((height (alist-get label squint-heights)))
    (set-face-attribute 'default nil :height height)))

we would like to have a function squint--height-from-label returning the height given the label. That’s easy:

(defun squint--height-from-label (label)
  (alist-get label squint-heights))

Then, we could abstract the details of changing the face attribute with:

(defun squint--set-height (height)
  (set-face-attribute 'default nil :height height))
  
(defun squint--set-height-from-label (label)
  (squint--set-height (squint--height-from-label (label))

Putting all together:

(setq squint-heights
      '((office . 100)
        (laptop . 180)
        (programming . 190)
        (presentation . 200)))

(defun squint--height-from-label (label)
  (alist-get label squint-heights))

(defun squint--set-height (height)
  (set-face-attribute 'default nil :height height))

(defun squint--set-height-from-label (label)
  (squint--set-height (squint--height-from-label label)))

(defun squint (label)
  "Adjust font height based on predefined settings.
LABEL is a symbol that corresponds to a key in `squint-heights'."
  (squint--set-height-from-label label))

That’s all. Verify that:

(squint 'programming)

still works.

Step 4 - Making squint interactive

Although you have defined squint, there is no sign of it in the list of commands displayed when you hit M-x. Yet, the function is defined globally: invoking M-x describe-function RET squint RET you can even read its documentation.

The fact is: M-x only lists commands, i.e., those functions that are explicitly declared as interactive.

Well, let’s make squint interactive then:

(defun squint (label)
  (interactive)
  "Adjust font height based on predefined settings.
LABEL is a symbol that corresponds to a key in `squint-heights'."
  (squint--set-height-from-label label))

Is this enough? Try yourself: hit M-x squint RET and you will get back the error:

funcall-interactively: Wrong number of arguments: 
  #[(label) (nil (squint--set-height-from-label label)) nil nil nil nil], 0

The problem is: the poor (interactive) function might even understand that it needs to ask the user for a label argument, but it cannot possibly figure out if this is a file, a string, a number or a symbol from a list, such as in our case. You must give it a hint.
Enter completing-read.

completing-read

Try:

(completing-read
 "Choose your poison: "
 '("arsenic" "digitalis" "strychnine" "belladonna"))

Evaluate it, make your choice and notice how it returns the selected string.
Does it work with symbols too?

(setq symbols
      '(office laptop programming presentation))

(completing-read
 "Choose your poison: "
 symbols)

Yes, it does! But notice: you gave it a symbols, it returns a string. Weird, but it is like it is.
What if you feed it with an alist?

(setq squint-heights
      '((office . 100)
        (laptop . 180)
        (programming . 190)
        (presentation . 200)))

(completing-read
 "Choose your poison: "
 squint-heights)

It still works, and it still returns the key as a string. Yes, it would have been easier if it returned the value rather then the key, but that’s life.

You can combine interactive with completing-read:

(setq squint-heights
      '((office . 100)
        (laptop . 180)
        (programming . 190)
        (presentation . 200)))

(defun squint--height-from-label (label)
  (alist-get label squint-heights))

(defun squint--set-height (height)
  (set-face-attribute 'default nil :height height))

(defun squint--set-height-from-label (label)
  (squint--set-height (squint--height-from-label label)))

(defun squint (label)
  (interactive 
   (completing-read "Desired height: " squint-heights))
  "Adjust font height based on predefined settings.
LABEL is a symbol that corresponds to a key in `squint-heights'."
  (squint--set-height-from-label label))

Try M-x squint now. Good: now it shows an interactive menu to choose from.
Make your choice, hit RET and be disappointed seing the debug window screaming:

squint--set-height: Default face height not absolute and positive

What’s wrong?
There are 2 issues:

  • The first is how we use interactive. If only we spent the time to consult its documentation (M-x describe-function RET interactive RET) we would have seen this line:
If the argument is not a string, it is evaluated to get a list of
 arguments to pass to the command.

We have:

  (interactive 
   (completing-read "Desired height: " squint-heights))

and we know that completing-read returns a string (indeed: the selected key, as a string), not a list. Indeed, interactive must work for an arbitrary number of parameters, so it makes sense it expects a list.
We can easily fix this surrounding completing-read with a list constructor:

(defun squint (label)
  (interactive (list
                (completing-read "Desired height: " squint-heights)))
  (squint--set-height-from-label label))
  • The second problem could also be easily forseen: completing-read returns a string, but our squint--height-from-label expects a symbol, because the squint-heights alist uses symbols as keys.
    Here is where having refactored those helper functions away pays off. We can use the function intern, that returns a symbol given a string:

Just change:

(defun squint--height-from-label (label)
  (alist-get label squint-heights))

to:

(defun squint--height-from-label (label)
  (alist-get (intern label) squint-heights))

Putting all together:

(setq squint-heights
      '((office . 100)
        (laptop . 180)
        (programming . 190)
        (presentation . 200)))

(defun squint--height-from-label (label)
  (alist-get (intern label) squint-heights))

(defun squint--set-height (height)
  (set-face-attribute 'default nil :height height))

(defun squint--set-height-from-label (label)
  (squint--set-height (squint--height-from-label label)))

(defun squint (label)
  (interactive (list
                (completing-read "Desired height: " squint-heights)))
  (squint--set-height-from-label label))

Try M-x squint RET (or, if you developed a taste for writing lisp, evaluate (call-interactively #'squint)): it will equally work.

Step 5 - Preview! Preview!

completing-read does already a lot.

  • It lets you select the preset with arrow keys.
  • It sorts the options accordingly to their most recent usage.
  • It lets you filter by typing (try typing "prog"" to see the list interactively narrow down to programming).

The next cool feature you might desire to have is a real-time preview. That is, the very moment you move on a candidate, even before confirming the selection, you would like to see its effect in place. Then:

  • Confirming the selection would keep the new height.
  • Canceling the selection, it would be nice to reset to the previous height.

This is much more challenging to implement. But maybe we can start by reusing what the magnificent consult package offers.

If you don’t have consult installed yet, show deep remorse, publicly express shame and amend by adding something like this to your init file:

(use-package consult
  :ensure t
  :demand t
  :bind (("M-g M-g" . consult-goto-line)
         ("C-x b" . consult-buffer)
         ("C-s"   . consult-line)
         ("C-S-s" . isearch-forward)
         ("C-x r b" . consult-bookmark)
         ("M-y" . consult-yank-pop)
         ("C-c r r" . consult-ripgrep)
         ("C-c g g" . consult-git-grep)
         ("C-c f l" . consult-focus-lines)))

You will not regret it.

Then, in your squint little package, replace completing-read with consult--read. Let’s see how.

consult–read

To break the ice, I suggest you to experiment with the following:

(consult--read
 '("arsenic" "digitalis" "strychnine" "belladonna")
 :prompt "Choose your poison: "
 :state (lambda (action candidate)
          (pcase action
            ('preview (message "preview: %s" candidate))
            ('return (if candidate
                         (message "return: %s" candidate)
                       (message "return: Nothing"))))))

consult--read is a bit more complex than completing-read, but for our goal it should suffice to know the following:

  • Remember that completing-read happily worked with lists of strings, lists of symbols or even alists? Well, consult--read is slightly pickier, as it does not like lists of symbols. Curiously, it accepts association lists whose keys are symbols. So, you can keep feeding it with squint-heights as the list of candidates, just like you used to to with completing-read.

  • Just like completing-read, after the candidate has been chosen, it returns the selected key as a string.

  • For any action performed by the user, the lambda function defined at :state is invoked, with 2 arguments: action, and candidate.

This lambda requires a bit of explanation.
It is invoked during several stages of the execution. The argument action specifies which. The value of candidate indicates the selected candidate, or nil if no candidate matches or if the user decided to cancel. Or in few other cases. And this makes things a bit hairy.
In practice, just know that the couple of action / candidate shall be interpreted as follows:

Value of action Value of candidate Meaning
setup nil consult--read has just been invoked.
preview some candidate The user focused on a candidate.
preview nil The user either typed something not matching any candidate, or completed the operation.
exit nil cosult--read is preparing to close the minibuffer.
return some candidate The user confirmed with a valid candidate.
return nil The user quit, without selecting a valid candidate.

I might be wrong, but although I think consult is a masterpiece, I would have prefered consult--read to be a bit more straightforward. Indeed, I find it a bit confusing.
Play with the example I provided above, keeping the *Messages* buffer open (M-x view-echo-area-messages or C-h e) and notice the following:

  • As you select a candidate, the lambda is invoked passing preview as the action and the candidate name. This is what we will use to preview the selected squint-height.

  • When you confirm the selection:

    • preview is invoked a last time, with nil as the candidate. What the hell?
    • Luckily, return is also invoked, with the selected candidate. Nice, it’s likely we will use this for the final selection.
  • Now, try to cancel the selection, using C-g:

    • Also in this case, preview is invoked a last time, with nil as the candidate. It’s likely that we will need to workaround those funny empty calls.
    • Also in this case, return is finally invoked. This time, though, with nil as the candidate.
  • Finally, try inputing garbage so that no candidate matches:

    • You will see the very same behavior as for legit candidates. This is also confusing.

A convenient option that helps handling some cases is :require-match t, which prevents the user from confirming the selection with a non-existing candidates. Unfortunately for our goals, preview is still invoked passing non-matching candidtes. Try yourself:

(consult--read
 '("arsenic" "digitalis" "strychnine" "belladonna")
 :prompt "Choose your poison: "
 :require-match t
 :state (lambda (action candidate)
          (pcase action
            ('preview (message "preview: %s" candidate))
            ('return (if candidate
                         (message "return: %s" candidate)
                       (message "return: Nothing"))))))

In conclusion: it seems that for the preview case we have to manually make sure that the input candidate is actually one of the valid choises. Since the candidate list squint-heights is an association list, we could use (assq key alist), a function returning the key/value pair if key is a key in alist, nil otherwise. This leads us to:

(setq squint-heights
      '((office . 100)
        (laptop . 180)
        (programming . 190)
        (presentation . 200)))
        
(consult--read
 squint-heights
 :prompt "Choose your poison: "
 :require-match t
 :state (lambda (action candidate)
          (pcase action
            ('preview 
                (if (assq (intern candidate) squint-heights)
                  (message "preview: %s" candidate)
                  (message "Nothing to preview")))
            ('return (if candidate
                         (message "return: %s" candidate)
                       (message "return: Nothing"))))))

An alternative could be to get the height directly, with out squint--height-from-label, then combining the definition of a variable and an if/then/else clause with if-let:

(setq squint-heights
      '((office . 100)
        (laptop . 180)
        (programming . 190)
        (presentation . 200)))

(consult--read
 squint-heights
 :prompt "Choose your poison: "
 :require-match t
 :state (lambda (action candidate)
          (pcase action
            ('preview 
                (if-let (height (squint--height-from-label candidate))
                  (message "selected: %s, previewing with height: %s" candidate height)
                  (message "Nothing to preview")))
            ('return (if candidate
                         (message "return: %s" candidate)
                       (message "return: Nothing"))))))

Cool. It seems to work.
By the way, having obtained a height already at this point will allow us to use squint--set-height directly, getting rid of the squint--set-height-from-label helper function.

Let’s keep on analyzing. Remember that preview is being called a last time, with a nil candidate? That’s the case when we don’t need to preview anything. We’d better replace the if-let case:

                (if-let (height (squint--height-from-label candidate))
                  (message "selected: %s, previewing with height: %s" candidate height)
                  (message "Nothing to preview")))

with when-let, which does the same of if-let, without an else leg:

                (when-let (height (squint--height-from-label candidate))
                  (message "selected: %s, previewing with height: %s" candidate height)))
Reset

We are almost done. We just need to cover the return case.

Think about this: we will preview the selected height by invoking our squint--set-height: by itself, this is a destructive operation. I mean, although the intention is only to preview the new height, there is no magic way to ask Emcs “I joked: undo what you just did”. Most likely, instead, we will need to keep track of the initial face height, and to invoke squint--set-height with that value, if the user cancels.

So:

  • If the user confirms the selection, we do nothing: we can keep the already previewed face height.
  • If the user cancels, we need to reset the height to the initial one.

This all means that we definitely need to store the initial height somewhere before invoking consult--read. We could either use a global variable, or a local variable, which we can conveniently capture in a closure.

Let’s play with a closure. Here’s a possible approach:

(let ((previous-height (face-attribute 'default :height)))

  (defun squint--reset-height ()
    (message "%s" previous-height)
    (squint--set-height 180))

  (defun squint ()
    (interactive)
    (consult--read
     squint-heights
     :prompt "Choose your poison: "
     :require-match t
     :state (lambda (action candidate)
              (pcase action
                ('preview (squint--set-height (squint--height-from-label candidate)))
                ('return (when (null candidate)
                             (squint--reset-height))))))))

For closures to work as you expect, Lexical Binding must be active. You ither need to add:

;; -*- lexical-binding: t -*-

as th very first line of your file, or to set:

(setq lexical-binding t)

You probably like to have a little explanation here. Let’s see.

Dynamic and Lexical Binding

Consider this:

;; -*- lexical-binding: t -*-

(let ((v "captured value"))
  (defun run-me ()
    (message "v = %s" v)))

It first defines a variable v with some value. v is not a global variable; it only exists in the scope defined by its let, so basically in the 2 lines under let itself.

Inside that scope, a function run-me is defined. Notice that run-me’s body makes use of v, and that v itself, from the run-me function standpoint, is defined in the outer scope.

We say that run-me captures v from its surrounding scope.

Now: you know that local variables are accessible only from within the scope they are defined. So, the following does not work:

;; -*- lexical-binding: t -*-

(let ((v "captured value"))
  (defun run-me ()
    (message "v = %s" v)))

(message "Do we have a v here? v = %s" v)

v does not exist outside its let scope.
Interestingly, though, this works:

;; -*- lexical-binding: t -*-

(let ((v "captured value"))
  (defun run-me ()
    (message "v = %s" v)))

(run-me) ;; v = captured value

This works because, as we said, run-me captured the variable v. In other words, run-me keeps a reference to the scope it was created in, so that scope does not die when the let expression finishes its execution.
This is basically the idea of closures.

Now, consider this slightly different version:

;; -*- lexical-binding: t -*-

(let ((v "captured value"))
  (defun run-me ()
    (message "v = %s" v)))

(let ((v "some other value"))
  (run-me))

Not surprisingly, the last expression still emits v = captured value.

In fact: we are creating another, separate variable v, with a different value. When run-me is evaluated, though, it still reference its own v. Although sharing the same name, the two v variables exist and live in separate, independent scopes. Which scope a specific piece of code is using can be easily determined by looking at where it is defined in the code structure: in other words, it can inferred from their lexical context.
This behavior is called lexical binding.

Emacs also supports dynamic binding. See the difference:

(let ((v "captured value"))
  (defun run-me ()
    (message "v = %s" v)))

(let ((v "some other value"))
  (run-me))

Notice that I removed the:

;; -*- lexical-binding: t -*-

I could even enabled explicitly the dynamic binding with (setq lexical-scope nil).

Surprisingly, now the last expression emits some other value.

In Dynamic Binding, variables are resolved based on the runtime environment rather than on the definition-time environment.
When run-me is defined, it doesn’t capture v. Instead, it just remembers that it needs to use a variable named v.
When finally run-me is invoked, it looks for the current value of v in the caller scope, at run-time. It finds a v set to some other value, and it uses it.

You will find very few languages supporting this style. You can learn more on this reading Lexical Binding in the Emacs Wiki.

So, here’s the code we ended up with:

;; -*- lexical-binding: t -*-

(setq squint-heights
      '((office . 100)
        (laptop . 180)
        (programming . 190)
        (presentation . 200)))

(defun squint--height-from-label (label)
  (alist-get (intern label) squint-heights))

(defun squint--set-height (height)
  (set-face-attribute 'default nil :height height))

(defun squint--get-labels (squint-heights)
  "Return a list of string labels from squint-heights."
  (mapcar (lambda (pair) (symbol-name (car pair)))
          squint-heights))

(let ((previous-height (face-attribute 'default :height)))

  (defun squint--reset-height ()
    (message "%s" previous-height)
    (squint--set-height 180))

  (defun squint ()
    (interactive)
    (consult--read
     squint-heights
     :prompt "Choose your poison: "
     :require-match t
     :state (lambda (action candidate)
              (pcase action
                ('preview (squint--set-height (squint--height-from-label candidate)))
                ('return (when (null candidate)
                             (squint--reset-height))))))))

Evaluate it, and you will have your beautiful squint command at hand.

Step 6 - Make it a package

It would be nice to have squint loaded when Emacs starts. I’m also sure that, as you get better and better with Lisp, you will improve this little function making it so beautiful that every single Emacs user in the world will want to use it. Eventually, you will need to publish it on Melpa, and it will overtake Magit’s monthly downloads.

So, you need to make it a package.
This is indeed a very easy task.

First, add a very last line declaring that the file provides a package:

(provide 'squint)

Second, make sure that the package name (squint) is consistent with the file name (squint.el).

Finally, store the file in one of the directories Emacs parses when it looks for packages. Inspect the variable load-path to know which ones (M-x describe-variable RET load-path RET).
In my case I get a huge list like this:

("/usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/"
 "~/.config/emacs/local-packages"
 
 "/home/arialdo/.config/emacs/elpa/ag-20201031.2202"
 "/home/arialdo/.config/emacs/elpa/aggressive-indent-20230112.1300"
 "/home/arialdo/.config/emacs/elpa/auto-hide"
 "/home/arialdo/.config/emacs/elpa/avy-20230420.404"
 "/home/arialdo/.config/emacs/elpa/buffer-expose-0.4.3"
 "/home/arialdo/.config/emacs/elpa/corfu-20241030.1005"
 ...
 "/usr/share/emacs/31.0.50/site-lisp"
 "/usr/share/emacs/site-lisp"
 "/usr/share/emacs/31.0.50/lisp"
 "/usr/share/emacs/31.0.50/lisp/vc"
 "/usr/share/emacs/31.0.50/lisp/use-package"
 "/usr/share/emacs/31.0.50/lisp/url"
 "/usr/share/emacs/31.0.50/lisp/textmodes"
 "/usr/share/emacs/31.0.50/lisp/progmodes"
 ...
 "/usr/share/emacs/31.0.50/lisp/calc"
 "/usr/share/emacs/31.0.50/lisp/obsolete")

Notice the second item: "~/.config/emacs/local-packages": this is a custom directory I created for my personal packages. here’s what you need to do:

  • Create a directory in your home or in the standard XDG directory (~/.config/emacs) where to keep your personal packages.
  • Then, in your init file, instruct Emacs to add this directory to the list of directories to search in:
  (add-to-list 'load-path "<YOUR_DIRECTORY_HERE")

That’s it. Now you can load squint with:

(require 'squint)

If you prefer use-package like I do, go with:

(use-package squint
  :ensure nil
  :custom
  (squint-heights '((office . 1000)
                    (laptop . 180)
                    (programming . 190)
                    (presentation . 200)))
  :bind ("C-c s q" . squint))

Never mind that your code already contains a definition for squint-heights: use-package is smart enough to use the value you provide in :custom.

Cool! Your first package!
Of course, there would be so much to add and study about packages — such as how to write a proper documentation, how to declare dependencies on other packages and the like. But you can be proud of yourself already, can’t you?

Where to go from here?

Why should squint work with font heights only? Why not to have presets for any arbitrary face attribute?
The scaffold is set up: you will not find hard to extend what you wrote so far.

If you want to get inspiration and to learn from a real master, go checkout Fontaine, by Protesilaos. It does exactly that.
In fact, this post is an elaboration of what I learnt from some lessons I got from him, as I wanted to better understand how his packages work.

That’s all. Take care. Happy lisping!

References