Episode: 1187
Title: HPR1187: I live in GNU/Emacs
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr1187/hpr1187.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-17 21:15:41

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Hi everybody, this is Ken with the Sonar Project Update for you.
There are now 37 hours left as I speak to you at this point in time, there's $7,193 raised
that's approximately 36% of the goal and only 194 people have donated which is less than
ideal.
There's still plenty of potential out there for people to donate, so it's coming down to
the wire now folks, so if you have not donated already please do so and appreciate all the
people who have donated in the last 24 hours and have contacted me, be sure that your name
is on the list for whenever I get my hands on some HP or Shveg.
Alright, thank you very much for that and I'll turn you back to today's show.
Hi, my name is Garjolda, I'm a member of the Sonar Project, I'm a member of the Sonar Project
and I'm a member of the Sonar Project and I'm a member of the Sonar Project and I'm a member
Hi, my name is Garjolda, today I would like to tell you a little bit about how I use GNU
EMAX, because I have to admit it, I live in GNU EMAX, I will not talk about configuration,
my dot EMAX file for example or about small EMAX list functions that I have implemented
for automating some tasks like mounting and mounting removable devices, making backups,
etc. I will just mention the modes and tools that I use in Mandale workflow.
Just let me remind you that there have already been some episodes on HPR about EMAX.
Kla2 did a three-part series on EMAX, this series is available on Episodes 852, 856 and 861.
The ultimate source of information about GNU EMAX is the EMAX Wiki at imxwiki.org
and all the links that I will give in this episode and I will write down on the show notes are hosted on the EMAX Wiki.
Okay, just let me tell you a little bit about the appearance of my GNU EMAX.
Actually, when you look at my screen, all you see is a black background with no menus, no scroll bars, no nothing.
So I have a full screen window which contains EMAX and that's all you can see on my computer.
So usually when people look at my screen, they often think that I'm on the console.
EMAX can run as a demon and this is the way I use it.
So when I launch my accession, I launch the EMAX demon and then all my EMAX windows are just EMAX clients that can connect to this demon.
Another use for this is the possibility for other applications different from EMAX to connect to EMAX and interact with it.
This also allows me to use the same EMAX when running X and sometimes when I go back to a console.
The advantage of using a single EMAX process is that all your buffers are available from all the clients and then you can use Kill Ring.
This is the copy-paste functionality of EMAX from different clients and share this kind of clipboard.
Of course, the main use of EMAX is writing code.
There are very useful modes for C++, for Python, for Lisp.
There's in the possibility of using interactive interpreters from within EMAX.
For example, if you're probably in Python, you can run Python inside an EMAX buffer so you can copy paste the code from your Python file to the interpreter buffer.
You can evaluate code inside EMAX.
You can do this for most of the usual interpreted languages.
There are also specific modes for Lisp, like Lisp, Scheme, Closure, and of course EMAX Lisp.
You can also compile your code from within EMAX.
For example, when I program C++, I can just run make from within EMAX and EMAX will create a buffer where all the compilation messages, errors, warnings appear.
So this allows you to go back and forth between the compilation messages and your source code.
You can also use GDB, the new debugger, from within EMAX.
But since my problems don't have any bug, I don't use it.
I also use EMAX to edit latex.
Latex is a well-known document preparation system, which is very much used for scientific and technology documents.
EMAX allows you to very easily edit latex and compile and view the results from within EMAX.
One of the main modes that I use in EMAX is the org mode that you can find at orgmod.org.
I use org mode for note-taking, for my agenda, as a spreadsheet, for writing reports, papers, slides, my blog.
org mode can also export to a mobile org, which is an Android application, which allows you to have access to your org mode files from your Android phone, for example.
For email, I use news.
News was originally written as an interface for use net news, but it is now mainly used for reading EMAX.
News is very powerful and can be as all EMAX modes customized at will.
I also use news for reading RSS feeds.
Using the green GW-E-N-E web interface, which allows you to transform an RSS feed to a use net-like newsroom, to which you can subscribe from within the news.
One very cool thing with a news is that you can use the remember function from org mode in order to store a link to an email message.
For web browsing from within EMAX, I use W3M.
Since W3M does not support JavaScript, when I need to go to websites, which use JavaScript, I use another web browser, which is called Conqueror.
Conqueror doesn't run within EMAX. It is a standalone browser, which is based on the geek rendering engine from Mozilla.
The interest of Conqueror is that it has all the EMAX key bindings to move inside a web page, but also to search for strings, to edit the text fields on the web pages, etc.
So it's very efficient when you spend the whole day inside EMAX.
For IRC, I use the IRC mode within EMAX, which allows you to connect to an IRC server, for example, and then join IRC channels, which will appear as EMAX buffers.
This allows you to use all the EMAX editing shortcuts and key bindings in order to use IRC.
Other small utilities that I use inside EMAX lack the info reader, which allows you to browse the info manuals.
I also use the Conqueror mode, which allows you to browse the Conqueror with a couple of keystrokes.
EMAX has, by default, what is called a scratch buffer, which is a buffer, where you can evaluate EMAX lips expressions.
So I use this buffer as a single calculator.
The Directory Editor mode is very useful for browsing your file systems for copying more infiles, renaming, opening files, but also opening them using other applications.
For example, if you're browsing your file system and you come to a file with this image, you can select the application with which you will open the image.
It's the same for any kind of file, for which you can use external applications to add it to browse the files.
Another very useful mode is the DogView mode, which you can use in order to view PDF, post-create files, even LibreOffice files from within EMAX.
The approach of DogView is to use an external application to convert the native format, let's say PDF, post-create or open document format to images, and then display the images within EMAX.
Finally, a very useful mode when you're programming, you use version control, is the VC mode, VC for version control, which is a front end to a lot of different version control software systems.
The interest of this mode is, first of all, that you can use it from within EMAX, but also that you have a set of commands which are the same for different version control systems.
For instance, I work on several projects, some of which use Mercurial, some of which use Git, and with this mode you have the same commands for the same kind of things you do to files like doing a commit, doing a push, doing a pull,
and these kind of things, even though the underlying commands for, let's say, Git and Mercurial are different, the VC mode allows you to have the same front end for both tools.
As you can see, there are many, many things you can do with EMAX, and as I said at the beginning, I spend my whole day within EMAX, getting out of it only for very specific things and very limited amounts of time.
Well, I hope you found all these interesting, and you will find all the links in the show notes, so don't hesitate to have a look at the EMAX Wiki.
And if you have any question or comment, don't hesitate to get in touch with me by email at garjola.net.
That is garjola.net. Garjola is spelled G-A-R-J-O-L-A. Thank you for listening. Bye-bye.
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