Category Archives: General

Martin Fowler On Completion And Ivy

Posted on 2024-02-07 by jcs

If you’ve been around Irreal for a while, you know that I’m a hug fan of abo-abo’s Swiper/Ivy/Counsel package. Its minibuffer completion system means that if I can get anywhere near the name of a command I’m trying to run … Continue reading →

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Building Emacs On macOS

Posted on 2024-02-06 by jcs

I often see posts on reddit and similar venues from people asking for help in building Emacs on Macs. On the one hand, it could hardly be simpler: you just download the code and call make. On the other hand, … Continue reading →

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Remote Work Won

Posted on 2024-02-05 by jcs

Adam Singer has a splendid rant about those who refuse to acknowledge that remote work has won out over the return-to-workers. The holdouts, he says, are bad managers and those with holdings in commercial real estate (CRE). You can understand … Continue reading →

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Which Function Mode

Posted on 2024-02-04 by jcs

Ruslan Bekenev has an interesting post that discusses which-function-mode. I was vaguely familiar with it before I read Bekenev’s post but never thought much about it. Bekenev, however, makes a good case for it. His use case is that he … Continue reading →

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Emacs Elements On Iedit

Posted on 2024-02-03 by jcs

Emacs Elements has a very short video on a relatively unknown but extraordinarily useful command: iedit. It does basically the same job as multiple cursors but is builtin and a bit simpler. It’s less powerful than multiple cursors but is … Continue reading →

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Red Meat Friday: Transparent Windows: Just Say No

Posted on 2024-02-02 by jcs

As you all know, the Minions are in a never ending death match with dark Emacs themes. To them, there is no worse UI choice. I submit, though, that they haven’t considered all the possibilities and that there are, in … Continue reading →

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Nested Key Maps

Posted on 2024-02-01 by jcs

Protesilaos Stavrou (Prot) has a great video on nesting key maps. A nested key map is just what it sounds like: a key map inside another key map. What that means practically is that one key shortcut will lead to … Continue reading →

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Directory Local Variables

Posted on 2024-01-31 by jcs

Recently, someone posted a link to Artur Malabarba’s old blog. Sadly, Malabarba no longer posts to it but it still has a lot of good and relevant information. The link was to a Malabarba post about directory local variables. The … Continue reading →

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A Factory For Ideas

Posted on 2024-01-30 by jcs

The title of this post was coined by Arthur C. Clarke to describe the famed Bell Laboratories facility at Murray Hill, New Jersey. If you’re in the software industry and like me, you probably think of Bell Labs as the … Continue reading →

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Two Org Mode Tips

Posted on 2024-01-29 by jcs

Nicolas Martyanoff has a nifty post that discusses some tips for dealing with Org headlines. There are actually three tips but I adopted only two of them. The first involves what happens when you type Ctrl+Return on a headline. By … Continue reading →

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