Irreal

Alvaro Ramirez has a cute iOS application called ⋆scratch⋆. The idea is that it provides an Emacs-like scratch buffer on your iPhone. If you’re like me, your first reaction is, “why would I want this?” But the use case is those situations where you want to capture a note as seamlessly as possible. One reason you wouldn’t need it is that iOS has the Notes app that’s for exactly that purpose.

I use Notes all the time. In particular I use it for my Memo Book where I record the significant events of my day. But notes has a bit of friction. You have to choose the appropriate note or start a new one. The nice thing about ⋆scratch⋆ is that you just bring it up and write whatever you want. It’s got some simple Org-like formatting but that’s not really necessary.

I wasn’t really convinced I needed it but it was only 99¢ so I bought it on a whim. A couple of days later I was out to dinner with some friends who told me about a wine they really liked. I thought it was worth trying out so I brought up ⋆scratch⋆ to capture its name. It was seamless and easy and just like that I became a ⋆scratch⋆ fan.

I’ve only had the app for a few days so I am by no means an expert on its use but the nice thing is that there’s not much to know. Bring it up and capture your data. You can share it or erase it or start a new scratch buffer but all that is after that fact. When you want to capture some data, you just bring up the app and capture it. I recommend it to iPhone users who occasionally want to capture some data.

We Emacs maximalists are always on the lookout for tasks that we can integrate into Emacs in our never ending quest to stay in Emacs as much as we can. Vivek Haldar has added another task to the list of things we can do within Emacs. He has a short video demonstrating his code to access ChatGPT from within Emacs. His method depends on a Python script to do the heavy lifting and some Elisp to deal with the Emacs interaction. There are links to both pieces of the code with the video.

If you’re an Emacser and interested in experimenting with ChatGPT, this may be a worthwhile app to include in your setup. I still think, perhaps erroneously, of ChatGPT as a sort of magic trick. It seems magical when you see it but if you look under the hood, it’s actually fairly easy to see what’s going on. The key to the results—given how it works—is the training data. If you’ve ever noticed how much nonsense there is on the Web, you’ll also understand some of the anomalous results ChatGPT occasionally produces.

Regardless, ChatGPT can be useful if you keep in mind what’s going on in the background. And, of course, it’s going to get better. Probably a lot better so it’s worthwhile laying down some infrastructure for it in your Emacs configuration.

Haldar’s video is a couple seconds short of 4 minutes so you can watch it pretty much at will. It’s definitely worth a watch if you have any interest at all in the intersection of Emacs and ChatGPT.

Andrew Hyatt has a new video that describes the changes to EKG version 0.2. I wrote about EKG back in February. The TL;DR is that it’s a note taking app that links notes similar to, say, org-roam but with some interesting differences in operating principals. EKG is available on Melpa if you want to try it.

Version 0.2 adds a couple more functions, info documentation, and some general bolt tightening. The two most significant additions are

Templating

Templates are a way of adding text to any note sharing the tag of the templates. The implementation is different from other templating systems you may be used to. Take a look at the video for the details.

Embddings

This is the most interesting change. Embeddings are a way of capturing similarities among notes. It’s more general than notes sharing terms. Hyatt gives the example of noodles and pasta. The embedding functionality will consider these similar even though noodles and pasta are not the same thing. Generating embeddings is a complex operation beyond the capabilities to Emacs so the chore is outsourced to OpenAI. That fact has some possibly negative consequences that Hyatt discusses in the video.

The video is 17 minutes 27 seconds long so it should be easy to fit in but it won’t make any sense if you haven’t watched the first video that describes EKG and explains what it does.

The minions, ever vigilant for opportunities to engage in another skirmish in the light vs. dark theme war, brought this to my attention and insisted that I run with it.

Maybe it’s time to make another #emacs color scheme. I need to do my part to fight the 20 year olds creating all this low contrast garbage. Code comments should not be low contrast. Nothing should be low contrast for that matter.

— Ryan (@Pixel_Outlaw) February 25, 2023

It’s not really a light/dark theme issue but it is related. It’s possible, of course, to have low contrast text with a light theme but you almost always see it with dark themes. A horrible example is dark gray on black or—even worse—dark blue on black. It’s essentially unreadable but some folks think it looks cool. Those of us with aging eyes are not as enthusiastic.

The minions are jumping up and down with glee about that tweet but maybe we should stop feeding the trolls: quit rendering low contrast text already.

Keith Waclena has a great Introduction to GNU Emacs. It’s an ongoing project that started back with GNU Emacs 19.29 in 1997 and has been in continual development since. This latest version is for Emacs 28.2. Waclena works for the University of Chicago as an applications systems analyst but his tutorial reads like (in a good sense) it was written by a professor trying to help his students learn Emacs.

His view of Emacs is much like mine: it’s not really an editor but rather “the last remaining Lisp Machine”. This means, among other things, it can be usefully though of as an operating system in that there are applications to perform almost any task that you need to perform.

It’s pretty clear that Waclena intended this to be a book or at least book-like. In several places he refers to it as a book and it is pretty comprehensive. He even covers such esoteric matters as dealing with the Meta key, how many spaces there should be after a period, Emacs versus the Unix philosophy, and usual myths about Emacs being a resource hog and slow.

This is a large document that covers at lot of material. It’s the best introduction to Emacs for beginners that I’ve seen. The document is also available in PDF or EPUB formats. If you’re looking for a comprehensive introduction to Emacs, this is a good place to start. Some of the topics are still TBD—as befits a work in progress—so it will doubtless continue to improve. It’s worth a look even if you’re an experienced Emacser.

When people talk about the killer apps of Emacs, they always mention two: Org Mode and Magit. They’re both uniquely Emacs apps—even though Org is seeping into other environments—and an essential part of the Emacs experience. For the working developer, Magit is a must-have. These days, Git is the default VCS and the absolute best interface—porcelain in Git-speak—is Magit.

Magit is maintained, and constantly improved, by Jonas Bernoulli (tarsius) who, unlike many open source developers, has no other job other than supporting his open source projects and who is completely dependent on community support for his livelihood. Due to a change in policy from GitHub, he is losing many of his supporters and is desperately in need of our assistance.

There are several ways of supporting him. He prefers, of course, a continuing pledge that you can arrange here but if you feel more comfortable with a one-time contribution—especially if you want to use PayPal—take a look at this page for some of the options.

It’s a scandal that large organizations that depend on Magit don’t step up to provide Bernoulli with a living wage but the majority of them don’t so it’s up to us. Most of us can’t afford significant recurring donations but we can make a one-time contribution even if it’s minimal. If you’re able, try to do that.