Irreal

… I’ve lost track. I’ve been using Jinx for my spelling correction for a while now and really like it. When I first started, my main problem was that the selection procedure described in the documentation didn’t work for me. I was almost certain that was because of an interaction with Ivy; my commenters agreed and offered some things to try.

After some experimentation, I still wasn’t able to get that aspect of Jinx working. I decided to wait for Emacs 31 to revisit the issue. Emacs 31 is here but I still haven’t addressed the problem. Most of the reason for that is that I’ve developed some efficient muscle memory for dealing with the problem. I have jinx-correct bound to Ctrl+; and when I call jinx-correct, I continue holding down Ctrl and can easily move down in the list of alternatives by pressing n. Usually the first choice is the one I want so it’s only a single press. Then I type Return to update the text.

That seems like a little more work than simply pressing a number but I don’t need to move my hands or reach to do it so it seems easy to me. I’ll probably do a bit more research and get the default method working when I get a chance but in the mean time, I’m pretty happy with how it’s working for me now.

I’m really enjoying how easy it is to put an “unknown spelling” in a variety of places—the current file, the current directory, or in a personal global dictionary—and am happy I switched. If you haven’t tried it yet, you should give it a spin.

Update [2026-09-09 Wed 11:55]: Fixed title typo.

As many of you know, my idea of a theme is to set the background to “oldlace” and the cursor to red. For the rest of it, I just take what Emacs gives me. That sounds pretty haphazard but it works out pretty well. It has enough contrast to be easy to read without searing my eyeballs and has enough syntax highlighting to be useful without being overpowering.

Prot (Protesilaos Stavrou) has a much more refined sense for these things. He considers what colors go well to together and things like contrast levels. Just the oposite of my “do with me what you will” approach. Nevertheless, I mostly don’t bother much with formally defined themes although I do occasionally like to take a look at them.

The reason for this post is Prot’s latest release of his Doric Themes. They’re sort of minimalist, like my non-theme theme but still very nice looking if you don’t want your Emacs screen to look like an arcade. The doric-almond variation is, in particular, very similar to my color scheme. Mine has a little more contrast: the foreground text is a bit darker and the keywords in my code buffers are a blue that’s slightly brighter than doric-almond’s light green. Still, it’s a theme that I’d be comfortable with if I hadn’t taken the easy way.

Some people have multiple themes and change them according to the time of day, their mood, the phase of the moon, or whatever. I’d hate that probably for the same reason that I don’t do well with trying to use different editors: I’d always be confused as to what’s what.

If you’re looking for a minimalist theme and my method seems too minimal, take a look at Prot’s Doric Themes. There are several variations in both light and dark mode.

James Cherti has another excellent post, this time on optimizing Emacs startup with use-package. The idea is that many configurations load a substantial number of packages and that this can cause a significant increase in startup time.

Most of you know by now that we here at the Irreal bunker refuse to worry about that because, after all, we hardly ever restart Emacs. Still, plenty of people do worry about it and there’s nothing wrong with learning a few easy to implement principles that will speedup Emacs startup without having to obsess about tiny details.

The TL;DR is to get use-package to defer loading of packages until they are actually needed. Most Emacers who aren’t complete n00bs already know this. The question is, how exactly, to specify the use-package commands to achieve that.

The obvious answers aren’t the right ones. For example, the :defer keyword seems like the natural answer but Cherti explains why this isn’t usually necessary and that it doesn’t do what you probably think it does. It’s much better to use one of the commands that implicitly defer loading but also arrange for autoloading the required functions when they’re needed.

Cherti also explains how to get use-package to add logging information to the *Messages* buffer to help with understanding the load process. There’s a lot of information in Cherti’s post and it serves as a handy reference for how to use use-package to control the loading of packages at startup time. If you’re at all worried about startup time or just want to understand how to use use-package to control package loading, take a look at his post.

As the result of a long standing discussion on the Emacs devel list, Emacs 31 comes with what amounts to a starter kit called newcomers-presets¹. The idea is to provide newcomers with a set of useful configurations to help them ease into Emacs. It is, however, much more than training wheels for n00bs. The presets described in it are ones that most experienced Emacs users are already using.

I know this because last April Sacha Chua wrote a splendid post that describes what’s in it. I somehow missed it back when she first posted it but she mentioned it in the latest Emacs News. As I’ve said before, I don’t usually write about things that she’s already covered in Emacs News but I broke that rule yesterday so I might as well break it again, especially since her post is especially worth your attention.

When newcomers-presets was first introduced I didn’t pay too much attention to it but then Prot recommended it for experienced users as well as beginners. The problem was that I was unclear on what exactly it did. Then I saw the reference to Chua’s post. It has a comprehensive list of what it does along with a explanation for each setting.

I won’t be using it because I’m not a fan of starter kits for experienced users and because even if I like everything in it today, it could change tomorrow. It’s better, in my opinion, to see what’s in it and add the things you think are useful to your own configuration. Chua includes a handy “Copy code” button with each item to make that easy.