Author Archives: jcs

Context

Posted on 2014-10-11 by jcs

Jessica Kerr makes a good point. Context is everything. If you doubt this, try using someone else's emacs. — Jessica Kerr (@jessitron) September 30, 2014 If you have a heavily customized Emacs configuration, using someone else’s Emacs could feel like … Continue reading →

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Debugging Emacs Lisp

Posted on 2014-10-11 by jcs

Nic Ferrier has posted a nice video tutorial on debugging Elisp. Ferrier covers the basics of instrumenting your code, stepping through it, setting breakpoints, and other edebug functions. He also demonstrates macrostep, a package that allows you to expand and … Continue reading →

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Emacs Screen Shots

Posted on 2014-10-10 by jcs

I really enjoy looking at Emacs screen shots (I know, I know. I’m seeking help) so I was happy to see this from the estimable Bastien Guerry. In a previous digital life, I created this #flickr group about #emacs screenshots: … Continue reading →

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Atabey Kaygun on Common Lisp Memoization

Posted on 2014-10-10 by jcs

Atabey Kaygun is a mathematician who likes to experiment with various (mostly mathematical) algorithms using Common Lisp. Many times, a function is most naturally implemented via recursion but this can lead to disastrously inefficient implementations. The canonical example is the … Continue reading →

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Emacs for (Non-Programming) Text Processing

Posted on 2014-10-09 by jcs

Om Prakash Singh is fairly new to Emacs and wanted to increase his skills and knowledge so he accepted the Emacs 30-day challenge. I found Day 7, Commands for Human Languages, particularly interesting. I use Emacs for a lot of … Continue reading →

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Emacs Debugger Tip

Posted on 2014-10-08 by jcs

Wilfred Hughes has a tip on debugging Elisp: Emacs tip of the day: if you can't reproduce a bug with edebug, use debug-on-entry instead! Yes, Emacs has multiple debuggers! — Wilfred Hughes (@_wilfredh) October 6, 2014

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Common Lisp format Summary

Posted on 2014-10-08 by jcs

The Common Lisp format function is a bit controversial among some Lispers1. The problem is that the language used by format to specify output strings is un-Lisp like. I’m not one of those people. I like format and feel comfortable … Continue reading →

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October Quicklisp

Posted on 2014-10-07 by jcs

The October Quicklisp is available. Upgrade with the usual (ql:update-dist “quicklisp”)

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Xah’s Roundup of Keyboard Articles

Posted on 2014-10-07 by jcs

As I mentioned recently, Xah Lee is obsessed with keyboards and knows a lot about the subject matter. The choice of a keyboard is a lot like the choice of a spouse or boy/girl friend: everyone has their own idea … Continue reading →

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Grabbing the Current Browser Tab from Emacs

Posted on 2014-10-06 by jcs

A little while ago, I wrote about grabbing the URL associated with a browser tab from within Emacs. I’ve been using since then and it simplifies things in more ways than I anticipated. Sadly, the method depends on OS X … Continue reading →

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