There was another meeting a couple of weeks ago of EmacsATX, the Austin Emacs Meetup group. For this month we had no predetermined topic. However, as always, there were mentions of many modes, packages, technologies and websites, some of which I had never heard of before, and some of this may be of interest to you as well. I was only on for an hour before I had to drop off; hopefully people did not save their bon mots for the period after my departure.
Also we changed the name of the month from “November” to “No-Vim-Ever”.
#1 was the organizer.
#2 was a no show.
#3 was again the developer from OKC.
#4 was a new person. She is a software developer looking into Emacs and other editors. This was her first meeting.
#5 was our professor in OKC.
#6 was a hardware developer in north Texas.
Here is a list of the modes and packages that were mentioned (I will not list the big ones here, like Org, Doom, Spacemacs):
- Games
- Eshell
- Calc
- TRAMP – The manual always writes it “TRAMP”, but other pages on the gnu.org site go back and forth between that and “Tramp”.
- MinEmacs
- nano-emacs
- Emacspeak
Here are the non-Emacs topics that came up:
- Routers
- Helix text editor
- Vim
- Keyboards
When I joined the call #3 was sharing his screen and playing a text adventure game that comes with Emacs (probably Dunnet). Then #3 started the Emacs Doctor. It is just a bad ELIZA and it was as dumb as the magic eight ball.
Why did you say that?
Because it’s true.
I mentioned that someone made an Emacs package to play Space Invaders in Emacs.
I asked if anyone knew of a router that did not connect with Phone. I have a wireless router that is about twelve years old. I have it configured that I can only change the configuration from a wired connection, which I think is good for security. I have looked into new routers, and a lot of them allow you to configure them from Phone, which I think is a stupid idea. I think doing everything on Phone is a bad trend. I have seen people pull halfway out of parking spaces and stop or stop in the middle of crossing a street because they are looking at Phone. As Pascel wrote in section 2:139 of Thoughts: Mankind’s problems come from his inability to sit in a quiet room alone. Phone is not the answer.
Unfortunately nobody knew of a router that did not use Phone, or if it was possible to disable configuring from Phone. #3 used several routers to have a mesh network throughout his palatial estate, and so liked the option to use Phone. Personally I wish everyone would move away from Phone.
I feel like people just repeat what they hear without asking themselves what they actually want. Now it’s all Phone, SaaS and ChatGPT. What everybody else calls “progress” seems to me like another way to give away the keys to the kingdom.
Then the discussion turned to Eshell. #1 showed us a way to pipe command output to buffer in Eshell:
ls > #<mybuffer>
#1 uses a lot of aliases in Eshell. We talked a bit about doing math in the Eshell and using Eshell in the REPL, although you can also do math in a scratch buffer. None of us used Calc. One reason I do not use Calc is I do not like the way it makes two small windows instead of using a large window. Perhaps there is a way to do that that I am not aware of. #3 tried to connect to a Vagrant VM running on his machine with TRAMP, and it took him several minutes. But once he did, he was able to use Eshell on the VM.
#4 was here for their first meeting. She started with vim on Ubuntu, and looked at Helix, which I had never heard of before. She is using MinEmacs, which is a lightweight Emacs configuration. She tried Doom, but found it overwhelming. I tried Doom, and I also found it a bit much. It seems like all the bad things about ORMs: You still have to know the thing it is trying to shield you from. Plus Doom has its own script, and requires environment variables. #3 does not like it because it uses a lot of macros. The sweet spot for Doom seems to be people who are coming to Emacs from Vim; that crowd loves it. I would recommend beginners avoid Doom.
#1 and #3 both like nano-emacs. #3 mentioned Crafted Emacs and Prelude. One thing #3 said he liked about Prelude was that it was straight Elisp, and one thing he did not like about Prelude was that he thought it took a while to start up. But you can start an Emacs instance and keep it running for a long time, so startup time might not be that important. If I was not using my own config, I think I would go with Prelude.
At one point #4 said something that implied she learned about using Org outside of Emacs and decided to try the One True Editor.
#4 also said she wants an editor that is functional but also has nice aethetics. There are a lot of themes to choose from, so this should not be a problem. Right now I just use the default, but at some point I might go with one of Prot’s Modus Themes. The three I like are modus-operandi, modus-operandi-deuteranopia and modus-operandi-tritanopia. A few people on the call said they liked the look of nano-emacs. There is a site dedicated to Emacs themes called Emacs Themes. There is also a themes section on the Awesome Emacs page.
There was a little talk on how to learn Emacs. Long ago #3 used Emacs on AIX, with no docs installed. They needed to get docs from another tape, but that was never done, so he learned from C-h t, which tells you all you need to know. You can reach this with M-x help-with-tutorial. There is a good “Beginner’s Guide to Emacs” on the Mastering Emacs site. When I learned, I first learned with about half a dozen to a dozen commands that I got by on for years. I wrote them down on a piece of paper that I kept at my desk at work. It is amazing to me that people never seem to want to write stuff down. Don’t play the game of “Who can spin the most plates in their head?” It is a stupid game to play. If someone is trying to get you to play it, get them out of your life. If you are trying to get other people to play it, then you do not need to ask Reddit. I can tell you that you are the problem.
A few members asked about voice control for Emacs. One member uses a lot of apps in addition to Emacs, and has to do a lot of copying and pasting between them under tight deadlines. A few people talked about Emacspeak (website, EmacsWiki page, Github page). There is one named Talon, although I am not clear if it is proprietary or open source. #1 worked with a blind programmer that used Emacs.
#1 showed us his “40% keyboard” which has two space bars. He uses one of the space bars as the control key. I think he is using this one by Vortex. He showed it on the camera, and someone said it looked like one of the keyboards that Emacs was originally written on. I thought Emacs was originally developed on a machine with the Space-cadet keyboard, but I could be wrong. There is some speculation about how the space-cadet keyboard got its name, but I don’t think anybody really knows anymore. #3 had a keyboard that would not allow key-remapping. The vendor would not change things since they insisted nobody uses control key. so he had to change keyboards, even though he loved that keyboard. He did not give the name of the vendor. Sometimes when a vendor says “Nobody does X”, they really mean: “Our product can’t do that.”
Usually when Emacs people talk about Emacs pinky I think: Why not just move your left hand an inch? Speed is great, but it is not the only thing that matters. I think in a prior meeting someone mentioned they are trying to use the right control key more often. On the other hand, if you are doing a lot of copying and pasting between multiple programs under a tight deadline, that might not be enough. This is something I have just discovered: a lot of vendors do not want their applications to talk to other vendors’ applications.
This post was created in Emacs with Org Mode and Love. You’re welcome. And stop looking at your stupid phone all the time.
I give people numbers since I do not know if they want their names in this write-up. Think of it as the stoner’s version of the Chatham House Rule. I figured that numbers are a little clearer than “someone said this, and someone else said that, and a third person said something else”. Plus it gives participants some deniability. Most people’s numbers are based on the order they are listed on the call screen, and the same person may be referred to by different numbers in different months. A few regulars have regular numbers.
I am not the official spokesperson for the group. I just got into the habit of summarizing the meetings every month, and adding my own opinions about things. The participants may remember things differently, and may disagree with opinions expressed in this post. Nothing should be construed as views held by anyone’s employers past, present or future. That said, if you like something in this post, I will take credit; for things you don’t like, blame somebody else.
Image from the Trebizond Gospels, a 12th-century Byzantine manuscript housed at The Walters Art Museum, manuscript information here, image from World Document Library, image assumed allowed under public domain.