Tag: Programming Language

Emacs' Buffer: The Ultimate Idea

Do you ever struggle to explain Emacs’ astounding power to other non-Emacsers?

Usually I do, but in this post is the first time that I ever felt that I did it some justice. But that is just a feeling and I want to know your take on it.

It is raw and unrefined, but, if you can read it just from one Emacser to another Emacser then want to hear your take on it, too. Your time is precious and this is something near and dear to my heart so I appreciate you spending your time to share your feedback and ideas.

Here is my response to the question What are the pros and cons of Emacs’ everything is a buffer approach and how does Atom compare in this regard?

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Keybinding To The Same Letter Both Lowercase And Uppercase

This post explains how to keybind to the same letter both lowercase and uppercase by using vector format. Key detail:

You must use the same syntax for both keybindings!

This always works correctly. 

(global-set-key [(control meta ?p)] #'help/insert-datestamp)
(global-set-key [(control meta shift ?p)] #'help/insert-timestamp*-no-colons)

This only sometimes works correctly which is the worst kind of working: don’t do it! 

(global-set-key (kbd "C-M-p") #'help/insert-datestamp)
(global-set-key [(control meta shift ?p)] #'help/insert-timestamp*-no-colons)

Send Line To Any REPL

Send the current line to the REPL, evaluate it and move to the next line. Works for lots of languages and does the right thing navigating to the next line.

If you learned this in ESS then you already love it. If you didn’t then you probably will now

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Start An Emacs Configuration Startup Debugging Instance Like This

Whether you use Org-Mode Literate Programming to manage your Emacs startup or not, you will enjoy testing your configuration files changes in another Emacs instance: 

alias ets="emacs --debug-init --no-init-file --no-splash --background-color white --foreground-color black --vertical-scroll-bars --eval '(switch-to-buffer \"*Messages*\")' --name TEST --title TEST --load ~/src/help/.emacs.el &"

For Sun workstation bootup nostalgia the buffer has black text on a white background.

Maybe Include This Info With Your Org-Mode ECM

(message "ECM Information Follows")
(message "Org-Version:")
(message (org-version))
(message "Org-Git-Version:")
(message (org-git-version))
(message "Emacs-Version:")
(message (emacs-version))
(message "org-babel-default-header-args")
(princ org-babel-default-header-args)

You Love Emacs And IKEA Is To Blame

Have you spent hundreds of hours configuring and thinking about Emacs?

And despite that your fondness for it only continues to grow?

And when you can’t explain to your friends why you love Emacs you chalk it up to your own poor communication skills.

I do.

But here is another explanation.

I dare you to watch all eleven minutes.

Addendum <2017-05-10 Wed 18:39>

Alternate title: “Emacs: You Came For A Bargain And Left With A Treasure”

Org-Mode's Two Most Useful Data Table Functions That You Probably Never Used

It might be hard to admit it for us Emacsers but most of us are pretty comfortable using Excel (or its clones) for data management. Maybe the fun stops there but it doesn’t have to.

Here are the two most important functions for getting the most out of working together with Org-Mode data tables and Excel (without having to use literate programming):

Continue reading “Org-Mode's Two Most Useful Data Table Functions That You Probably Never Used”