2023-12 Austin Emacs Meetup

There was another meeting a couple of weeks ago of EmacsATX, the Austin Emacs Meetup group. For this month we had a predetermined topic: Eshell. However, it did not last long and it became a free-for-all. 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. This time I stayed for the entire meeting.

#1 was the organizer.
#2 was a developer in the Dallas area.
#3 was again a no show.
#4 was the professor in OKC.
#5 was Norm!
#6 was a new person. At one point I asked the new people to introduce themselves, but #8 piped up, and then we got onto new topics.
#7 was the engineer in College Station.
#8 was a new person in Austin.
#9 was the developer in Seattle.
#10 was also a new-ish person in Austin.

Here is a list of the modes and packages that were mentioned (I will not list the big ones here, like Org, Doom, Spacemacs):

• Eshell
• EmacsConf (not really a package, but still related)
• Hyperbole (Emacswiki link here, GNU link here)
• Posframe

Here are the non-Emacs topics that came up:

• AI
• JIRA and “Enterprise Software”
• RMS
• Internet getting worse

We started off talking about Eshell. There was not too much that was not covered in past meetings, although since the attendees were not the same, it might have been new to some of the people here. #1 talked about using aliases, which I have not tried in Eshell. #1 also demonstrated using TRAMP with Eshell. Eshell will not run ncurses programs. We spent some time discussing the precedence for commands in Eshell (aliases -> built-in -> system commands -> Lisp functions).

#1 said that it would not be able to replace your current shell, but I think you could use it as your daily shell. Granted, if you have a lot of shell scripts you use frequently, you would need to re-write them to use Emacs Lisp. Eshell can run system commands, but I do not think it can do piping or handles loops or environment variables the same way as other shells. I think in order to use Eshell effectively and daily that you would need to become good at Emacs Lisp. Also, there are a LOT of shell scripts and fragments out there that are useful and work in common shells, so ditching Bash entirely will probably never happen.

Someone mentioned that the motivation behind Eshell was that the guy who started it wanted to use Emacs on Windows, and wanted a consistent shell. Another person pointed out to Howard Abrams, who posted about using custom functions in Eshell (see here and here), in addition to his EmacsConf talk about Eshell in 2022 (see here, here, and post by Irreal here).

Next, #4, our returning three-time EmacsConf champion, gave a few thoughts on the latest EmacsConf. He particularly liked the closing remarks on Sunday, which were about making Emacs more accessible to beginners. Although he might have been referrign to Sharing Emacs is Caring Emacs by a sophomore at Columbia University named Jake B who has a YouTube channel with lots of content about Emacs. He is hopeful for the future of Emacs. He also liked a presentation from a professor who got students proficient in Emacs in less than two weeks. I think he was referring to this one. Just as with last year, each presenter pre-recorded their talks, and were available for a live Q&A afterwards. Sometimes the discussions went over their allotted time, which on one hand is a sign of a good talk, but the downside is that sometimes people missed the next talk.

#4 felt that the conference was run more smoothly from the perspectives of a speaker and a viewer, and that last year was better than the year before. While this was #4’s third time speaking, he does not hold the record: I think that goes to Howard Abrams at 4 times, along with organizer Sacha Chua, who has spoken at all of them. (She also provides the weekly Emacs news update on her site.) Some of the presenters were professors, while some were people who use Emacs for their work. There were also a couple of presentations about internal Emacs development, as in development of Emacs, not simply with Emacs.

I still have not gotten to watching videos from the prior conferences. My ever-expanding TODO list is now turning into an ARE-YOU-SERIOUS-ABOUT-ANY-OF-THIS list. Just when I thought the “mmm, donuts” phase of my life was over, there is another EmacsConf.

There were a few more intros. #10 lives in Austin, and had been to a few EmacsATX meetings pre-pandemic in the Capital Factory, although the name and voice did not ring a bell with me. #8 was also in Austin, and had tried to come to a meeting for more than a year. He works in finance, and is interested in Org mode.

Then the talk turned to Org for a while. #1 decided that the next meeting would be about Org, with whomever shows up contributing. A few people recommended videos: there is this one from Thoughtbot and this one from Prot. I recommended Rainer König’s Org course on Udemy. The day the meeting happened the course was about $15, but now it is $84. Someone pointed out you could put a Udemy course in your shopping cart, and wait until the price goes down. I have still not finished Rainer Koenig’s course, and I may never finish it. Just going through the first half was enough to get me started with Org. #9 said he took that course after I mentioned it at a meeting, and also thought it was good.

Then the conversation turned to AI and the wisdom of automation and customization. Our first AI contender is Khoj, which runs a local AI that can scan your local files (website here, Github page here). #7 seemed interested in scanning local files; I suggested he look into GPT4All; the website says it can scan local files, but when I tried to do that I killed it because it did not seem to make much progress. Perhaps you need a machine with a GPU to do local scanning. A few other projects that run models are LocalAI and Ollama. Just about all of these depend on the grand-daddy of local AI: llama.cpp.

#2 said he takes a lot of notes for meetings, and would like something that could take some of the notes for him. #7 mentioned OtterAI. A couple of us looked at the website for a few minutes, and we could not see any API or a way to get transcripts or notes into Emacs (or anything else for that matter). So Otter takes notes, but the site does not tell you where it puts them.

#4 asked about Hyperbole (site here, manual here). There were a couple of talks about it in this year’s EmacsConf, and it seems to be gaining momentum. He mentioned Hyperbole can work with local files, which a few of the people call wanted for their local AI. So it might overlap with Khoj. From just reading the docs, it sounds a lot like Org mode. At some point I hope to watch this year’s EmacsConf talks; perhaps that will help me decide if I should look into Hyperbole.

We talked a bit about yak shaving, and spending a lot of time configuring tools, or automating something that we do rarely or only one time. #2 said there are a lot of mountain bikers who spend a lot of time working on their bikes, but not really getting any better. As one person on the call put it: Why spend an hour doing something when you can spend 10 hours automating it? There was also some complaining about enterprise software, or stuff the managers like and the tech people hate. One person hates JIRA, and tried to access it through Emacs, and now uses go-jira. Someone mentioned Shortcut as an alternative to JIRA.

I mentioned I might look at the list of Emacs functions and go through them. Someone on Mastodon or Reddit mentioned that there are a lot of packages that duplicate function that is in Emacs that people do not know about. There is another list at a site called Endless Parentheses, although the blog has not been updated in a while.

We talked about RMS, and his legacy in light of his cancer diagnosis. With regard to Emacs in particular, it seemed like Emacs was stagnating for a while, and it picked up when he let someone else handle it. He is certainly important in the free software/open source movement, but that should not put him beyond criticism. I think insisting on only talking to interviewers who said “GNU/Linux” was a stupid hill to die on, and he lost a lot of moral authority. He was being an ass at the same time his vision was being validated.

It does seem like the internet is getting worse over time. A few of us longed for the good old days. It used to be people expressing their opinions, now it is all about selling things. If you do not want the web to just be about money, donate to your Mastodon instance. The Emacs.ch instance has a link to a donations page, but for a long time it was not there. I messaged the admin, who told me it is still valid and they put it back. It took them a few days. Perhaps they were busy watching EmacsConf videos; let me know if I should look into Hyperbole. The donation page can be found here. You might want to also consider paying for email, and get away from the email Cerberus of Gmail, MS and Yahoo.

#4 mentioned the Lem project, which is trying to be an Emacsen for Common Lisp. The page says you can write Common Lisp without “writing tidy settings or installing many plugins as you do on Emacs”. That may be true, but Emacs can be used for a lot of things, not just one thing. I would like to look into Common Lisp. There is a project called Portacle, which is an Emacs starter kit for Common Lisp. I wonder how they compare. Perhaps with all the new language features in Emacs (LSP, Eglot, tree-sitter), perhaps you could just install Prelude and program in anything.

#1 mentioned that MIT/GNU Scheme has a variant of Emacs called Edwin. I wonder if MIT still uses it in any of their courses, or if they stopped when they stopped SICP.

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 Tetraevanghelul Ieromonahului Spiridon, a 15th-century Romanian manuscript; image from Capodpere 2019, Google Translate page here; image assumed allowed under public domain.