Author Archives: jcs

Indexing Your Init File

Posted on 2023-04-15 by jcs

James Dyer has a useful short post on indexing his init.el file. His scheme is simple. His init.el is broken into sections each of which starts with ;; ;; -> Section-name ;; Then he used occur to generate the actual … Continue reading →

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The Dictionary Package

Posted on 2023-04-14 by jcs

Bozhidar Batsov over at Emacs Redux has a nice post on looking up words in a dictionary with Emacs. The post is about the dictionary.el package that’s built into Emacs as of version 28. Dictionary is a package for talking … Continue reading →

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Outage

Posted on 2023-04-13 by jcs

Sorry folks. The Irreal International Headquarters and its neighbors have been without Internet access all day. It just came partially back so I’ve decided to push today’s post to tomorrow and get this notice out while I still can.

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A Clean Writing Environment

Posted on 2023-04-12 by jcs

Dhavan Vaidya has an interesting post on a clean writing environment. It’s his idea of the ideal writing milieu. What strikes me about his post is that his idea of the best writing setup is completely different from mine. About … Continue reading →

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Emacs Progress: Version 29 Pretest

Posted on 2023-04-11 by jcs

Eli Zaretskii (did I mention he won an FSF award for his contributions to Free Software) writes to tell us that the first pretest for Emacs 29.1 has been released. The final release of Emacs 29.1 is still some time … Continue reading →

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Improving IELM

Posted on 2023-04-10 by jcs

If you’ve been around Emacs long enough to learn some Elisp, you probably know about IELM, the Inferior Emacs Lisp Mode. It provides an Elisp REPL that is often easier to use than evaluating separate Elisp statements. It’s one of … Continue reading →

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Beating The House At Roulette

Posted on 2023-04-09 by jcs

This post isn’t strictly within the purview of Irreal but I think it will appeal to the nerd in all of us. Most of you know that a perfect roulette wheel produces completely random results but, of course, no wheel … Continue reading →

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Emacs Docs

Posted on 2023-04-08 by jcs

Ghislain Vieilledent reminds us of a useful Website for Emacs documentation: RT @ctietze@mastodon.socialhttps://t.co/ZPYqv8Kge9 I was looking up font parameters for #Emacs and found https://t.co/ONGPmG8h9T It claims to be “The modern documentation website Emacs deserves” And I think they’re right. They … Continue reading →

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Red Meat Friday: Another Skirmish In The Emacs/Vi War

Posted on 2023-04-07 by jcs

As I’ve often said, I never enlisted in the Emacs/Vi wars. I’ve used and like them both but feel they serve distinct user requirements and aren’t really in competition. Still, that doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate the occasional volley that … Continue reading →

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DALL-E in Org Mode

Posted on 2023-04-06 by jcs

If you follow Alvaro Ramirez’s work, you’ll soon discover that his usual procedure with a project is to start with a good idea and then keep pushing it to improve it and add new features. A case in point is … Continue reading →

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