From b63a98974f31cee7afb92b8de713079af2f9ecad Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Joseph Nuthalapati Date: Mon, 4 Nov 2019 00:21:42 +0530 Subject: [PATCH] emacsconf 2019: Add heading and more content Signed-off-by: Joseph Nuthalapati --- content/posts/emacsconf-2019.md | 101 +++++++++++++++++++++++++------- 1 file changed, 81 insertions(+), 20 deletions(-) diff --git a/content/posts/emacsconf-2019.md b/content/posts/emacsconf-2019.md index b9d73b6..10531af 100644 --- a/content/posts/emacsconf-2019.md +++ b/content/posts/emacsconf-2019.md @@ -17,17 +17,54 @@ internet, with audience conversations over IRC. The conference was powered entirely by free software tools. RMS and some FSF members were also among the audience. -One of the speakers called Emacs the mother of all free software. When RMS -started the free software movement, one of the first tools he built was Emacs, -using which all other free software was developed, starting with glibc. A lot of -free software development is done on 40+ years old Emacs even to this day. +More details about any of the talks mentioned here can be found in the +[notes](https://pads.ccc.de/fPYMhovcNN "notes"). + +## Updates + +There was an Emacs community update and an Emacs development update. Both were +very interesting. The community is sure taking notice of Spacemacs. Maybe Doom +Emacs is not that popular yet. I am excited about the new built-in features of +Emacs 27 - tab bar and ligatures. I was surprised that Emacs being one of the +most popular free software projects still suffers from a lack of core +developers. Maybe there are a lot of people willing to write Elisp but not many +interested in contributing to the C core. + +## The Hackable Text Editor The core of emacs is written in C with Elisp offered as an extension language. -All of the elisp source code that is running on your Emacs is available easily +All of the Elisp source code that is running on your Emacs is available easily through Emacs itself. Elisp is designed to be an easy-to-use minimalistic language that non-programmers can use to create small improvements in their workflow. +## Software Freedom + +One of the speakers called Emacs the mother of all free software. When RMS +started the free software movement, one of the first tools he built was Emacs, +using which all other free software was developed, starting with glibc. A lot of +free software development is done on 40+ years old Emacs even to this day. + +Though most of the talks were about people doing cool things with Emacs, I was +more emotionally touched by these two talks - "GNU Emacs as software freedom in +practice" by an FSF member Greg Farough and "How to record executable notes with +eev - and how to play them back" by Eduardo Ochs. These two talks emphasized +the freedom that Emacs gives to its users, whether they are programmers or not. +Both the speakers use Emacs the way it is meant to be used. They truly used +Elisp as an extension language. I highly recommend watching the talks after +they're posted. This got me thinking. Though I am primarily a programmer and use +Emacs for almost all text editing, I barely programmed anything in Emacs - the +programmable text editor. This is mostly because I think that my newbie elisp +scripts are not as good as the ones already available as Elisp packages, so I +refrain from writing elisp at all. I realized that this is not how Emacs is +meant to be used. + +Emacs is all about taking the free software editor built by the community, +making it your own through customization and contributing your improvements back +to the community if you can. + +## Future of Emacs + The most controversial talk and the one that generated the most conversation at the conference was a talk titled "Emacs: The Editor for the Next Forty Years" by Perry E. Metzger. It was quite a ranty talk by an Emacs user of over 20+ years. @@ -51,18 +88,42 @@ interoperate with elisp since there's too much of it to replace without decades of work (e.g. org-mode has 120k lines of elisp). The importance of concurrency and parallelism in the new language is also stressed. -Though most of the talks were about people doing cool things with Emacs, I was -more emotionally touched by these two talks - "GNU Emacs as software freedom in -practice" by an FSF member Greg Farough and "How to record executable notes with -eev - and how to play them back" by Eduardo Ochs. These two talks emphasized -the freedom that Emacs gives to its users, whether they are programmers or not. -Both the speakers use Emacs the way it is meant to be used. They truly used -Elisp as an extension language. I highly recommend watching the talks after -they're posted. This got me thinking. Though I am primarily a programmer and use -Emacs for almost all text editing, I barely programmed anything in Emacs - the -programmable text editor. This is mostly because I think that my newbie elisp -scripts are not as good as the ones already available as Elisp packages, so I -refrain from writing elisp at all. I realized that this is not how Emacs is -meant to be used. Emacs is all about taking the free software editor built by -the community, making it your own through customization and contributing your -improvements back to the community if you can. +### Replacing Shell Scripts? + +One of the talks was about trying to automate tasks using Elisp as a replacement +for shell scripts (Emacs as my Go To Script Language - Howard Abrams). The idea +is interesting but probably wouldn't entice a Perl hacker to try and use Elisp. +I have done this myself in the past but the speaker went a bit further in +building a framework for doing ad-hoc text processing and piping using Emacs. +The hard reality is that text processing using macros or Elisp is very slow as +compared to using a Python or Perl script. + +### Miscellaneous + +Most of the talks were about how people were using Emacs in their daily life and +about the cool applications they built on top of Emacs. + +As an +[Orgzly](https://njoseph.me/blog/posts/replacing-cloud-based-to-do-apps-with-orgzly-and-syncthing/ +"Replacing cloud-based To-Do apps with Orgzly and Syncthing") user, I found a +self-hosted web-based solution called [Organice](https://organice.200ok.ch/ +"Organice") interesting. + +The craziest hack I saw is making an object-oriented spreadsheet program in +Elisp, putting sheet music in it and rendering the audio using a Scheme program. + +Almost all presenters used org-mode to make their presentations, with some +people presenting it within Emacs and others using exported PDFs. + +Just like the Quake-inspired terminals Guake and Yakuake, there's one called +[Equake](https://gitlab.com/emacsomancer/equake) that launches a drop-down eshell. +You can also use the racket shell called rash, which is crazy powerful. This has +very good integration with StumpWM. + +There was a talk by Parham Doustdar, a blind developer who uses Emacs as his +daily driver. There were some interesting insights on how neglecting +accessibility in applications seriously impacts the productivity of +vision-impaired users. Some features can be completely inaccessible. Though the +W3C is doing some work to improve accessibility in browsers, most HTML is +rendered by client-side JavaScript these days which makes life even more +difficult for blind users. -- 2.43.0