13 lines
6.2 KiB
Plaintext
13 lines
6.2 KiB
Plaintext
<p><img class="alignright size-full" height="263" src="https://macadie.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/btv1b55007799h.53.png" width="199" />It is time for another update on Austin Emacs, along with some observations.</p>
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<p>There was a meeting of the Austin Emacs Meetup early in the month. As always, there was no set topic.</p>
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<p>There was some discussion of the <a href="https://www.emacsdocs.org/">Emacs Docs website</a>. Generally the feedback was positive.</p>
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<p>One guy started demonstrating <a href="https://www.orgroam.com/">Org Roam</a>. It looks pretty interesting, but for now I am still getting the hang of plain Org. He also showed us a couple of packages: <a href="https://github.com/anticomputer/gh-notify">gh-notify</a> for managing GitHub notifications (I have no idea if it works with git outside of GitHub) and <a href="https://github.com/wandersoncferreira/code-review">code-review</a>.</p>
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<p>There was also a lot of discussion around zettelkasten. Here is the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zettelkasten">Wikipedia page</a>. <a href="https://zettelkasten.de/posts/overview/">Here is a site</a> telling you how to do it; it’s hosted in Germany, so I guess it’s the official zettlekasten site. Zettlekasten.org is a site by a group that tried to put a knowledge management system on the blockchain. It does not look like there has been any activity for a while. Perhaps you can use your coins to buy a <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29643257">non-fungible Olive Garden</a>.</p>
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<p>I mentioned again I plan on going through the <a href="https://emacsconf.org/2021/">EmacsConf videos</a> from prior years, as well as for 2021. None of us had started looking at the 2021 videos. Some of them look interesting. I mentioned that there were two that I thought I would not find interesting: <a href="https://emacsconf.org/2021/talks/org-outside/">The use of Org mode syntax outside of GNU/Emacs</a> by Karl Voit, who has a few good pages/posts about <a href="https://karl-voit.at/tags/emacs/">Emacs and Org</a> on his site, and <a href="https://emacsconf.org/2021/talks/model/">Extending the “model” of Emacs to other applications</a>. An Emacs conference discouraging the use of Emacs seems a bit odd. I will give them all a chance, but on the surface I don’t think I will like those two.</p>
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<p>Every time there is a thread about Org mode on Hacker News, there is always some jackass complaining that Org does not work on mobile. Frankly, I have <a href="https://www.macadie.net/2018/12/10/thoughts-on-apps-and-devices/">little interest in mobile</a>. I like the bigger keyboard and bigger screen on my laptop. I hate typing on a phone, and I do not want to clutter my phone with a lot of apps. I do use the clock/stopwatch app a lot, but that is it. I don’t need to use it for banking, credit cards, paying utility bills, paying for gas, or getting an app for every store I walk into. And while I am interested in technology, I have no desire to ever do any job on my phone.</p>
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<p>I think doing Org on a phone is stupid. Yes, you have to learn Emacs, but that also yields benefits. There was a <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25036036">thread on Hacker News</a> asking why so many coders still use Vim and Emacs. A few comments pointed out that in the past decade, we have seen a few editors come and go: Sublime, Atom, Light Table. Now it’s VS Code, but who knows how long it will last? (And frankly I do not trust Microsoft one bit.) Meanwhile, while everybody else was changing their workflow every couple of years, the Vim and Emacs people kept doing what they were doing. On a phone, you will always be limited by the small screen, and whatever limitations Apple, Google or Microsoft put on you. With Emacs, the sky is the limit.</p>
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<p>I think people should stop trying to get Org working on mobile, and just use it where it does work. Sort of like everybody should learn how to read S-expressions and stop trying to make Lisp into Python (see <a href="http://metamodular.com/Essays/wrong.html">here</a> and <a href="https://beautifulracket.com/appendix/thoughts-on-rhombus.html">here</a>). A lot of people want the capabilities that S-expressions give you without using S-expressions, so they create wrappers and languages around it. It just seems like it would be easier to use S-expressions.</p>
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<p>Like Lisp, Emacs is different than everything else, takes a lot of effort at first to get comfortable with, but after a point continues to yield dividends. As opposed to a lot of GUI and mobile apps, which seem easy at first, but eventually you hit a wall. Maybe I am trying to live life on hard mode, but I think this is the way to go. Although I am not doing accounting in plain text (see Hacker News posts about plain text <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27679050">here</a>, <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28102128">here</a>, <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28420797">here</a>, <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21685660">here</a>, and here is a link to the <a href="https://plaintextproject.online/">Plain Text Project</a>).</p>
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<p>At the Emacs meetup I mentioned a thread I saw on the website for Obsidian, which is another knowledge management system using Markdown. The thread starting with someone asking <a href="https://forum.obsidian.md/t/why-did-you-choose-obsidian-instead-of-emacs/17030/8">why they chose obsidian over Emacs</a>. One person said that they couldn’t use Emacs on mobile. They needed seven apps to replace Emacs. That is the point of learning Emacs, and why I am not interested in mobile.</p>
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<p>I am still converting all my text files into org files, and choosing where to put headings and how to group them. This is taking longer than I thought. I have a lot of deep thoughts. But I am in org mode every day. Ideally I would like a job where I am in Emacs all day. I am getting really tired of using MS Office, or MS anything.</p>
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<p><em>Image from “Evangelia quattuor [Les quatre Évangiles, en latin]”, a 10th century manuscript housed at the Bibliothèque nationale de France. Source <a href="https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b55007799h/f1.planchecontact">gallica.bnf.fr</a> / BnF; image assumed allowed under <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain">Public Domain</a>.</em></p> |