Category Archives: General

Loading The Emacs Init File

Posted on 2025-05-09 by jcs

Charles Choi makes an astute observation about the Emacs initialization file from the point of view of the new user: there’s no obvious way of loading it or even knowing that it exists. The problem is especially acute on the … Continue reading →

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Toggling Narrowing

Posted on 2025-05-08 by jcs

Over at the Emacs subreddit, sebhoagie has a short post that some of you may find useful. Sebhoagie really likes narrowing and uses it all the time. Sometimes, though, the narrowed code refers to code outside the narrowed region and … Continue reading →

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The Apple Decision

Posted on 2025-05-07 by jcs

By now, everyone knows about Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers’ decision that Apple can no longer refuse to let apps link to payment methods outside of the iOS app system. The idea was that if you ordered anything through an iOS … Continue reading →

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A Small Git Improvement For Elisp Files

Posted on 2025-05-06 by jcs

James Cherti has a quick tip on configuring Git to provide more meaningful diffs for Elisp files. The problem, he says, is that by default Git diffs simply provide a line-by-line difference with no added context such as what functions … Continue reading →

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Emacs For Non-Programmers

Posted on 2025-05-05 by jcs

MarchZealousideal543 over at the Emacs subreddit asks a familiar question: Is it really feasible or even possible for a non-programmer to use Emacs productively? I know I write about this a lot but I find the subject fascinating. MarchZealousideal543 got … Continue reading →

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Searching The Web With Emacs

Posted on 2025-05-04 by jcs

If you’re one of those brave folks who doesn’t mind browsing the Web from within Emacs, I just came across a package that may interest you. It’s emacs-websearch a small utility that lets you specify a term, search for it … Continue reading →

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Accessing Research You Already Paid For

Posted on 2025-05-03 by jcs

A long standing source of frustration in the research community has been the locking of research papers behind paywalls. It’s easy to see how detrimental this is to the scientific research enterprise. After all, the purpose of publishing papers is … Continue reading →

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🥩 Red Meet Friday: Parenthesis: Get Over It Already

Posted on 2025-05-02 by jcs

As you almost certainly know, we here at Irreal have little patience for those constantly whining about parentheses in Lisp. They seem to us like little kids complaining to Mom that “it’s not fair”. Apparently, we’re not the only ones. … Continue reading →

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Journelly!

Posted on 2025-05-01 by jcs

Hooray. Journelly, which I think of as an iOS front end for Emacs’ Org mode, has been officially released. For those of you who have been waiting for an official release to try it out, your time has come. I’ve … Continue reading →

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Preventing Minor Modes From Appearing On The Mode Line

Posted on 2025-05-01 by jcs

The Emacs mode line contains a wealth of information, much of which I depend on daily. Some of that information is what the major mode is and what minor modes are active. Again, that’s often useful information. Still, there are … Continue reading →

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