Monthly Archives: June 2024

Favorite Emacs Utilities

Posted on 2024-06-30 by jcs

Over at the Emacs subreddit, Phovox—a 30-year Emacs user—asks what your favorite Emacs utilities are. He’s started using Doom Emacs and has discovered, through Doom, utilities that he didn’t know about. So he’s wondering what else he may have missed … Continue reading →

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Emacs For Writing

Posted on 2024-06-29 by jcs

There’s a great question and answers post over at the Emacs subreddit. The question, from lynnlei, asks how a prose writer who has been using Vim should approach moving to Emacs. This comes up a lot, of course, and it’s … Continue reading →

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BOM Characters From Windows Files

Posted on 2024-06-28 by jcs

It’s been a slow day on the Intertubes for Irreal material but I do have something that might interest those of you who have the misfortune to be running Emacs on Windows. Just the other day, we discussed the sad … Continue reading →

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One Line Per Sentence

Posted on 2024-06-27 by jcs

Chris Maiorana has another thought provoking post that advocates the use of one line sentences. The idea is that each sentence ends not just with a period but with a newline. That seems a little unnatural but has a lot … Continue reading →

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Why SICP Matters

Posted on 2024-06-26 by jcs

All you Irreal oldtimers know that I’m a fanatical fan of Abelson’s and Sussman’s Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (SICP). It is, I think, arguably the best computer science book ever written. You oldtimers also know how bitterly disappointed … Continue reading →

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Casual Suite

Posted on 2024-06-25 by jcs

Charles Choi has made good on a promise he made in his post announcing a name change for some of his early Casual packages. In that post, he said he was going to bundle all the current and future Casual … Continue reading →

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The Emacs 30 Release Cycle Has Started

Posted on 2024-06-24 by jcs

Eli Zaretskii has announced the start of the Emacs 30 release cycle. What that means is that Eli has created the emacs-30 release branch and restricted commits to it to bug fixes that don’t affect low level code. This is … Continue reading →

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PSA: Emergency Emacs/Org Release

Posted on 2024-06-23 by jcs

Stefan Kangas writes to tell us about an emergency Emacs release to version 29.4. This is the result of a recently discovered Org mode problem, that you can read about here. Both projects have offered updates. The Org mode announcement … Continue reading →

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The Hours That Programmers Keep

Posted on 2024-06-22 by jcs

An enduring stereotype about hackers—as opposed to those who program only as a day job—is that they get up at noon, start programming in the late afternoon, and keep programming for most of the night. Many of us, me included, … Continue reading →

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🥩 Red Meat Friday: Is Emacs Slow For You

Posted on 2024-06-21 by jcs

Over at the Emacs subreddit, MarkieAurelius has a mini-poll that asks: Is Emacs Slow For You? That’s a perennial question, of course. I last wrote about it a year ago. Not much has changed since then. The same uninformed people … Continue reading →

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