Irreal

One of the really great tools in Emacs is the Dired/Dired+ package. Recently, Mickey wrote a nice introduction to using Dired to run shell commands on files; I commented on that here. The other day, by happenstance, I found myself needing to do just that. I wanted to display a series of PDF files from a directory to collect some information. Since I was in Emacs already to collect the data, I used Dired to list the directory and then used 【!】 to invoke the PDF viewer.

Emacs, of course, is pretty smart about things like that and suggested that I use xpdf. That would be precisely the right answer if I was working on one of my Linux machines but this was OS X and I really needed to invoke the open command. So I had to delete the suggestion and type in open for each file. Not really much trouble but later I thought that there was undoubtedly a way to control the suggestions.

There is, of course. After grubbing around in dired.el for a bit, I found the answer. Dired uses an alist to match the default applications to file extensions but it has another—empty by default—alist, dired-guess-shell-alist-user, that it will prepend to the default list if it’s present.

So I added

(setq dired-guess-shell-alist-user      ;quess shell command by file ext
      '(("\\.pdf\\'" "open")
        ("\\.ps\\'" "open")))

to my OS X specific configuration and now I get the proper suggestion when I run a shell command on PDF or PS files. How can you not love Emacs?

I recently came across this sketchnote from Sacha Chua. I not sure how I missed emacslife.com but I don’t remember reading anything about it before. The site is a wonderful Emacs resource. It’s got links to tons of posts, articles, and videos about Emacs and Org mode.

It’s got tutorials for beginners, links to her Emacs chats, links to a slew of videos on Emacs, and a long section on Org mode and how to use it for managing your work flow and publishing blog posts, talks, and other documents.

Take a look at the landing page to get an idea of the topics the site covers. It’s all done as simple Org files, which are available on Github, so it’s easy to keep up to date and expand. According the sketchnote, Chua is hoping for input from others so if you have a valuable link that’s not listed, drop her a line. And take a look at the Emacs Life site. I think you’ll like it.

The indefatigable Sacha Chua has been chatting up a storm lately and has even more scheduled for the near future. Recently she chatted with Xah Lee and discussed his approach to and use of Emacs. It was an interesting chat.

One might call Lee the King of Customization. He, more than anyone else I know, has taken advantage of the near-infinite customizability of Emacs. He’s changed almost every key sequence in his quest for ergonomics in Emacs. This is more than just changing a key sequence to some other random, easier-to-reach set of keys. Rather he has worked to eliminate all chording. He does that by replacing chords with a sequential sequence of two or more keys. Watch the video for the details.

I’ve posted many times about the various helper Elisp functions he’s written. One of the reasons for all those functions is that, unlike lazy people such as me, Lee writes his blogs in raw HTML rather than leveraging Org mode or some other higher-level tool. In a sense, that’s a bit like writing in assembly code so Lee needs a lot of help from his editor. Happily, Emacs is up to the challenge and Lee has been able to build a custom environment precisely tuned to his needs and inclinations. The result is that he can write HTML as quickly as most of us can generate the same content with, say, Org mode.

Like most of Chua’s chats, this one is just short of an hour so plan accordingly. I think you’ll find the chat interesting and worth your time. Lee is a man of strongly held opinions, which he is never hesitant to express. Many find this off-putting but I think you’ll find that this video shows that he’s an engaging and interesting guy. An Emacs geek just like the rest of us.