Author Archives: jcs

FSM Diagrams in LaTeX

Posted on 2022-11-03 by jcs

I’ve written several times about my use and affection for finite state automata in programming. It’s amazing how often it can reduce a complex problem to a triviality. The first stage in taking advantage of this method is to draw … Continue reading →

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A Discussion of Markup Languages

Posted on 2022-11-02 by jcs

Alex Kladov has a post that discusses various markup languages and what makes a great one. He considers Markdown AsciiDoctor LaTeX reStructuredText HTML He finds them all lacking in various ways. He believes that any markup that’s tied to a … Continue reading →

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EmacsConf 2022 is Coming

Posted on 2022-11-01 by jcs

Leo Vivier announces on the Emacs subreddit that the 2022 EmacsConf is scheduled for December 3rd and 4th. The conference will be live streamed so you needn’t travel to participate. Most of us won’t be able to watch the whole … Continue reading →

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Emacs Modifier Keys in X-Windows

Posted on 2022-10-31 by jcs

Most Irreal readers know that Emacs offers the Hyper and Super modifier keys for use in keybindings. Less well known is that there is also an Alt key. It’s not the Alt key that appears on most modern keyboards that … Continue reading →

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The Coverup Begins to Unravel

Posted on 2022-10-30 by jcs

Irreal has long been suspicious about the back story of COVID-19. As I’ve written before, if you put on your scientific hat, the only possible conclusion is that there’s not yet any definite resolution to covid-19’s genesis. But if you … Continue reading →

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Mickey on Readline

Posted on 2022-10-29 by jcs

Mickey has another great post that will be immediately useful to almost every Irreal reader. The post is about the functionality of the GNU readline library. As Mickey says, almost everyone knows that readline (or at least BASH) implements the … Continue reading →

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An Org-mode to DOCX Pipeline

Posted on 2022-10-28 by jcs

Erik L. Arneson has a useful post that describes his method of converting an Org document to DOCX. His reason for doing that is the usual: his clients want a Word document but like all right thinking people, Arneson prefers … Continue reading →

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Speeding Up Emacs Garbage Collection

Posted on 2022-10-27 by jcs

Tyler Dodge over at Living the Dream Blog has a very interesting post on his research on Emacs garbage collection time. He discovered that a a simple parameter change could reduce garbage collection wall clock time by 50%. The change … Continue reading →

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Another Hugo Blogging Workflow

Posted on 2022-10-26 by jcs

Andrey Listopadov has (yet another) post on blogging with Hugo. His post is distinguished by his attempt to be comprehensive. He says that when he was trying to start blogging all the “how to” posts were too shallow to be … Continue reading →

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Playing YouTube Videos in Emacs

Posted on 2022-10-25 by jcs

Marcin Borkowski often watches long YouTube videos (frequently lectures) and sometimes can’t watch the whole thing in a single sitting. A couple of weeks ago, he wrote a post about capturing the elapsed play time where he left off and … Continue reading →

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