Category: Link

Choosing a font in Emacs on Windows

The truth is that I haven’t read the Emacs documentation yet. I will read it, it is on the list. Until then, I’ve relied on other kinds folks to provide answers for my questions. Tommy was kind enough to provide an answer for this one.

Evaluate the following in the scratch buffer: 

(insert (w32-select-font))

For more information on Fonts in Emacs on Windows, go here.

(via Tommy)

Lucida Console Font on Emacs

Folks running Emacs on Windows (like me) might like to set their font to Lucida Console.
Until I find a tool or documentation on how to write X style font lines, I’ve copied some font-lines from other folks websites.

; (set-default-font "-outline-Lucida Console-normal-r-normal-normal-11-82-96-96-c-*-iso8859-1")
; (set-default-font "-*-Lucida Console-normal-r-*-*-11-82-*-*-c-*-*-ansi-")
; (set-default-font "-*-Lucida Console-normal-r-*-*-11-82-*-*-c-*-*-#204-")
; (set-default-font "-outline-Lucida Console-normal-r-normal-normal-12-90-96-96-c-*-iso8859-1")
; (set-default-font "-*-Lucida Console-normal-r-*-*-12-90-*-*-c-*-*-ansi-	")
; (set-default-font "-outline-Lucida Console-normal-r-normal-normal-13-78-120-120-c-*-iso10646-1")
; (set-default-font "-*-Lucida Console-normal-r-*-*-13-97-*-*-c-*-*-ansi-")
; (set-default-font "-*-Lucida Console-normal-r-*-*-14-*-96-96-c-*-iso8859-1")
; (set-default-font "*-Lucida Console-normal-r-*-*-15-*-96-96-c-*-iso8859-1")
; (set-default-font "-*-Lucida Console-normal-r-*-*-16-120-96-96-c-*-iso8859-1")

On Windows XP Pro, the difference in the font-line settings between font-sizes doesn’t seem to make any difference.
References:
http://www.crsr.net/Notes/Emacs.html
http://angg.twu.net/.emacs.local.w32.html
http://www.emacswiki.org/cgi-bin/wiki/JonathanArnoldDotEmacs
http://www.opensubscriber.com/message/emacs-devel@gnu.org/8995847.html
http://www.charlescurley.com/emacs.html
http://www.dotemacs.de/dotfiles/AndreyAKulaga.emacs.html
Addendum 05/30/08:
Here is the answer.

Modularity in the Java platform

This presentation at JavaOne 08 could have been called “Features in Java 7 that people will love and wonder why it took so long to get them”.
The topic was JSR-277: The Java Module System.
Here is the 20K foot summary:

  • Give modules (roughly jars) first class language support
  • Provide support for module composition at deployment time

The result: no more Jar (aka DLL) hell and a lot of flexibility in terms of how you configure and deploy your system.

Chicago Lisp 5/16 Meeting

The next Chicago Lisp meeting is coming up this Friday, 5/16/8. Here are the relevant links:
Chicago Lisp Information Page (for now check here first)
Chicago Lisp Homepage (eventually this will be the master information site)
I will be heading down for this meeting, and presenting at it, so if you would like to carpool let me know!
Addendum 05/21/08:
Here is the presentation and source material from my talk. This is the 25lb version of the presentation; it is not light advocacy stuff, rather, it is just a lot of crunchy bits that are meant to be discussed interactively.
Addendum 05/27/08:
Peter posted a great recap of the presentation.
080516chicagolisp.jpg
Addendum: 08/17/08
Here is an updated presentation and materials, v2.01.

A Lisp Joke that gets it right

Here is the classic programming “how do you shoot yourself in the foot” joke, brought to Lisp by someone who “gets it”!

TASK: Shoot yourself in the foot.

LISP: You shoot yourself in the appendage which holds the gun with which you shoot yourself in the appendage which holds the gun with which you shoot yourself in the appendage which holds the gun with which you shoot yourself in the appendage which holds the gun with which you shoot yourself in the appendage which holds the gun with which you shoot yourself in the appendage which holds…

(via DaniWeb)

What every Subversion user must know about Git

Subversion is perfect (simple concept, lots of books, good tool integration, and easy to use) but for the fact that it doesn’t support:

While the former should be addressed in version 1.5, the latter is anyone’s guess.

The problem is that Subversion is just so good that eventually you will will want a distributed mode with Subversion.

Fortunately, Git supports distributed operation against Subversion repositories!

If this gets you “on the Git bus”, check out this:

An introduction to git-svn for Subversion/SVK users and deserters.

(Thanks Geoff for the links)

Addendum 05/03/08:

Tonight I tested out setting up cygwin from scratch to use Git, and in doing so confirmed what I knew and discovered what I didn’t!

You must use the following packages:

  1. Git 1.5.5.1-1
  2. Subversion 1.4.5-2
  3. Subversion-perl 1.4.5-2

Failure to install the subversion-perl bindings results in the error: = Can’t locate SVN/Core.pm in @INC

Thank you ycdtosa for the pointer!

Addendum 05/03/08:

If, like many of us, you haven’t fully cut over to cygwin, you may receive the following error message when you attempt a commit:

You have some suspicious patch lines=

Here is both an explanation of and a work-around for the error.

To solve the problem, you need to edit .git/hooks/pre-commit and comment out the following lines:

=if ($) { bad_line(“trailing whitespace”, $_); }=

Before tonight, I figured that I would never have the need to use dos2unix ever again! Based on one of the commentors replies, though, I expect that further research on the operation of Git is required on my part in order work between CR and CRLF environments:

Git from some time has core.autocrlf and crlf attribute, which should help in mixed UNIX (LF) and Windows (CR LF) environment