Category Archives: General

RMS On What He Wants and Doesn’t Want in Emacs

Posted on 2022-12-14 by jcs

RMS presented a talk at the EmacsConf 2022 meeting on what he’d like to see and not see in Emacs. His first point was to dismiss the idea of replacing Elisp with something like JavaScript. Besides the technical infeasibility due … Continue reading →

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Debugging Elisp

Posted on 2022-12-12 by jcs

Jon Eskin has a revealing post that shows how easy it is to use the Elisp debugger. The debugger, Edebug, is documented in the Emacs Lisp manual so of course it’s always available in your Emacs session. What I liked … Continue reading →

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Plan 9: If It’s Not Broke, Don’t Fix It

Posted on 2022-12-11 by jcs

I just came across an interesting article that appears to be from Francesco Nidito—although I’m not sure about the provenance—concerning the Plan 9 operating system. The gist of the post was that Plan 9 was a brilliant piece of software … Continue reading →

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The Origins of PostScript

Posted on 2022-12-10 by jcs

The IEEE Spectrum has a lovely article about the origins and early history of PostScript and how it jumpstarted desktop publishing and arguably digital printing. Most Irreal readers probably know the rudiments of the story. PostScript was developed at Adobe … Continue reading →

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Use-package Merged into Emacs 29

Posted on 2022-12-09 by jcs

Stefan Kangas just announced that use-package has been merged into the emacs-29 branch. I’m inclined to take a conservative view towards moving packages into core Emacs, believing that a package should prove its worth and stability over an extended time … Continue reading →

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Prot On Clojure and Cider

Posted on 2022-12-08 by jcs

As most Irreal readers know, Protesilaos Stavrou (Prot) is looking for a new job. Part of his preparations is learning Clojure so of course he’s produced a video on using Clojure in Emacs with Clojure. It’s an elementary exposition but … Continue reading →

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Update On The Org-9.6 Problem

Posted on 2022-12-07 by jcs

Yesterday, I wrote about Org-9.6 failing to load after my weekly update. I’m happy to report that due to the advice of the excellent Irreal readers Fran Burstall and Mike S, I have resolved the problem. The problem turns out … Continue reading →

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PSA: Beware of Error With Org 9.6

Posted on 2022-12-06 by jcs

My usual routine is to update my Emacs packages on Sunday. After my last update, I restarted Emacs and Org wouldn’t load, complaining that org-assert-version was an invalid function. After a bit of messing around, I uninstalled Org-9.6 from my … Continue reading →

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Howard Abrams On Why You Should Use Eshell

Posted on 2022-12-05 by jcs

Regular Irreal readers know that I’m a fan of Howard Abrams’ posts and videos on Emacs. Abrams gave a talk at EmacsConf 2022 on the Top 10 reasons why you should be using Eshell. He felt that the talk was … Continue reading →

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Zamansky Returns

Posted on 2022-12-04 by jcs

It’s Advent of Code time again and, as is his wont, Mike Zamansky is meeting the challenge and blogging about his results. Even better, he’s posted a video on his solutions to the first two problems. The video isn’t about … Continue reading →

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