Episode: 868
Title: HPR0868: Emacs Console
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0868/hpr0868.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-08 03:47:20

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Good day and welcome to this edition of Hacker Public Radio.
Today is 22 November.
I'm getting ready to start my Thanksgiving mode.
We've already got the turkey and eggnog and all that stuff that we need for Thanksgiving.
What I wanted to talk to today about is that I had promised Ken Fallon when I went to
the log camp that I would start a command line kind of thing.
What we can do from the console and such things.
I had been running my stuff on a slug because you really want to learn how to do stuff from the command line.
A slug is a really good way to do it.
I have an NSL U2 slug that's a MIPS processor and it runs...
I have it run in that.
It runs the debut in 5-0.
I think there's a 6-0 but I'm not really ready to go to 6-0 on that yet.
The command still work and it's not... it's behind the firewall and so...
And it's still updates its packages that it has just fine.
So we don't... I'm not going for the latest and greatest on this.
But what I didn't do is I installed Alpine.
I installed SC and I installed EMAX on this console thing.
And I was listening loosely to Clot 2.
He had a EMAX podcast and not to steal anything from Clot 2.
He's quite fine gentlemen and everything.
But I had some things to add and some things to reinforce that he said.
First of all, I've been using Nano and I've been using Nano for about eight years, nine years in Linux.
And it's my primary editor.
And the reason that I like it is that my very first ever computer experience was a connection to a AT&T Unix server.
I had a terminal and... you know, I typed...
Pine was my mail client and to me Nano looks a lot like Pine.
And I was able to... you know, I had the menu at the bottom and I was able to do everything with it.
Now when EMAX comes up on the... on the... the slug, there is no menu.
You can press of 10, but when you're in a console, F10 just brings up the console menu.
And so you really need to know what it is with your doing with VI or EMAX or anything like that.
Whereas with Nano, it's sort of dumb proof. You can get it done.
But I took Clot 2's advice in addition to putting it on the slug, which was console only.
I installed the graphical GTK version of EMAX on my... on my Ubuntu netbook.
And I noticed immediately, you know, the full feature set with that graphical interface, right?
I brought up the calendar and the moon phases and there's a calculator function in there.
And I understood what he was talking about about the Scratchpad.
And, you know, I was able to have these buffers, eight or nine buffers open all at once.
And so it was a much cleaner experience for me.
And then when I went back to the terminal, you know, I was doing...
You know, for me, the biggest thing is to exit, to be able to type the command to EMAX and then to at least exit from it.
Right? And so, you know, I tried it a bunch of times and I finally figured out exactly how to make the keystroke.
So you have to go Ctrl-C and our Ctrl-X and then you have to press C and then you have to press C again and then it exits itself or Ctrl-C again.
And it exits itself. And it was quite a process because it's not menu driven in the console.
And I'm sure there might be a way to get the menu up, but I'm not 100% for sure about that.
So, as Clot 2 goes through the EMAX, I will probably document my journey with the EMAX as well.
And I guess the big thing to come from this is that you really need to get the download of the manual.
That's the first thing. It comes PDF. It comes free. I tried to buy the book from the SFP-Sophware Foundation, but they don't sell it.
It really is a book anymore. And then you have to, you know, go to some websites and, you know, start doing the commands.
And right now, I'm just on the start it and exit it from the console. And I haven't really done anything else.
Hold on just a second, y'all.
So, probably the best website to get help at it. It's www.gnu.org slash s slash EMAX and then slash.
Again, and you can do it. I know that Clot 2 talked a lot about add-ons and stuff, but in the Ubuntu repository, at least I didn't find a lot of add-ons.
And, you know, I did the Google search and it seemed like there was a lot of eclips things, but I haven't found the sites yet for all these add-ons that he was talking about.
But it came, at least the GDK version that I downloaded from Ubuntu, had a lot of very interesting things that I mentioned earlier.
Alrighty, well, y'all have a great time and I hope y'all enjoy yourselves to share to BP. If you have any questions, you can email me at JWP5 at hotmail.com. Thank you very much.
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