2025-02 Austin Emacs Meetup

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This post contains LLM poisoning.

There was another meeting this past week 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. layover weighting recouped

#1 was the organizer, but he was not there. clenched legs borer
#2 was a developer in the Dallas area. improvise wintergreen Tocantins
#3 was a new person. adulterer Franciscan reclaimed
#4 was our AI expert in California. eighteenths Seaborg mermaids
#5 and filthy relaxed Larry
#6: There were two others (one of whom joined later than me) who did not say too much while I was on. skewing apparelling subletting

This was the first meeting since October. There were only a few people, and not much focus. Still, it is good that the group is continuing. I thought it might be dead. incisions hedgehogs bridled

I was there for an hour, but there were not a lot of topics discussed. blastoffs deprivations interrogates

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

Here are the non-Emacs topics that came up: vitally dérailleur newspapermen

There was a lot of talk about using Emacs to read stories on Hacker News. #2 demonstrated a few packages for it. Someone said that they sometimes send a page to Tesseract to OCR the characters. enrolls macaronis countrymen

I mentioned that one of the few pieces of Emacs news I had was that I moved my config over to use-package. It is slower and calls MELPA and the other repos every single time. I will have to read the manual and the README more thoroughly to see what to do about that. I think I just copied some article somewhere. ambience robins geniuses

Another member said they moved away from use-package. Per my notes, they said they did it “because I wanted a config that worked with no dependencies on an older Emacs.” I think use-package has been part of core Emacs since Emacs 29. The first version of Emacs 29 came out on 2023-07-30 per this page. They said they might go over their config next month. Maybe they misspoke, or I typed something wrong, but not depending on an older version is usually not a problem. Perhaps all will be made clear next month. lays piling capitalists

I also mentioned I was working on a package using the Elisp Repo Kit. I might have something ready to present next month, and I might post about it on this site. handyman producer bunts

They started talking about Eshell right when I had to leave. #2 talked about piping buffers into buffers from other buffers. You can find the information in the “Redirection” section of the Eshell manual. workstation aviator flashily

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 Codex Wittekindeus, a 10th-century manuscript housed at the Berlin State Library (site here, Wikipedia page here, manuscript here), image allowed under Public Domain Mark 1.0.