Author Archives: jcs

The Emacs 31 Branch Has Been Created

Posted on 2026-05-08 by jcs

As I mentioned a few days ago, the Emacs 31 release process was on the verge of starting. Now Sean Whitton writes to tell us that the Emacs 31 branch has been created and that the feature freeze has begun. … Continue reading →

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Grove

Posted on 2026-05-07 by jcs

Jonathan Chu is a software engineer and Emacs enthusiast who’s been looking for a note taking app that he can actually use. He’s tried all the usual suspects but found them too opinionated for his liking. He wanted to work … Continue reading →

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Microsoft, IBM, And The TAB Key

Posted on 2026-05-06 by jcs

Raymond Chen has an amusing story just in time for Mothers’ Day. It’s a story from the joint OS/2 development effort of Microsoft and IBM about the mismatch in organizational structures between Microsoft and IBM. In those days, at least, … Continue reading →

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Emacs Keyboard Ergonomics

Posted on 2026-05-05 by jcs

Protesilaos (Prot) has an excellent post on keyboard ergonomics for Emacs users. He considers various strategies for making Emacs commands easier to use and less likely to cause RSI damage. He considers everything from split keyboards to evil-mode. He says … Continue reading →

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Coffee: It’s Good For You

Posted on 2026-05-04 by jcs

An old joke, known and beloved by every developer, is “A programmer is a machine for turning coffee into code.” It’s certainly true that it’s an important component of my productivity, coding and otherwise. An overwhelming proportion of Irreal readers, … Continue reading →

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Prot’s New Org-to-buffer Package

Posted on 2026-05-03 by jcs

Protesilaos (Prot) has a new, interesting package available: buffer-to-pdf. It does just what its name suggests. It takes the current Emacs buffer and exports it to PDF preserving things like theme, and font characteristics. It’s easy to use. You simply … Continue reading →

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The Start Of The Emacs 31 Release Process

Posted on 2026-05-02 by jcs

Sean Whitton writes to say that the Emacs development team is planning to start the Emac 31 release process next week. That means that they will cut the Emacs 31 branch and start the process of testing and refining it … Continue reading →

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A Couple Of Emacs Quickies

Posted on 2026-05-01 by jcs

Here are a couple of quickies. Neither one requires much exposition on my part but they are both interesting. In the first, Prot shares what he considers decent default settings for Emacs. Naturally, I don’t agree with all of them … Continue reading →

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RSS With Gnus

Posted on 2026-04-30 by jcs

After reading the sad news that Chris Wellons is abandoning Emacs and the Emacs packages he developed one of my first concerns was for Elfeed. It’s the RSS reader that I depend on everyday for my research and news curation. … Continue reading →

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Goodbye Old Friend

Posted on 2026-04-29 by jcs

I recently opened my feed to discover this post from Chris Wellons. The TL;DR is that Wellons, after 20 years, is abandoning Emacs for Vim. Folks do that, of course, but Wellons is special because he’s been a prolific author … Continue reading →

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