5 ms·

I used standard Emacs extension-points to extend org-mode

202 points by Karrot_Kream 1y ago

skydhash 1y ago
The model of computer use that appeals to me are the one that in theory have a simple system, but the real goal is for you to have a tool that fits your needs. So far it includes the BSDs (Unix), Emacs, and Smalltalk. I've not tried Plan 9 yet. The more I'm learning more about the above, the more I'm believing that most computer problems has been solved since a long time and the focus should be on improving and creating new tools, not reinventing them. PS: Spreadsheets are nice too, but they're still lacking the surrounding helpers that would make them great. There's VBA in excel, but I'm thinking about more like dynamic table that's linked to an endpoint or some commands (Unix's ps). I haven't explored tools like Airbase to see if they fit that vision.
- dharmatech 1y ago
  Which Airbase tool are you referring to?
  - skydhash 1y ago
    My bad. I was referring instead to airtable. It’s SaaS, but I’m talking more about the concepts
- josteink 1y ago
  > There's VBA in excel, but I'm thinking about more like dynamic table that's linked to an endpoint I believe Excel has PowerBI for this purpose.
- smj-edison 1y ago
  You might find Glamorous Toolkit[1] and Folk computer[2] in that category too! Full disclaimer, I currently contribute to Folk (it's still pre-alpha but it has some really exciting ideas). [1] https://gtoolkit.com/ https://gtoolkit.com/ [2] https://folk.computer/ https://folk.computer/
alexkehayias 1y ago
Having used emacs for many years, OP's description of "doing things wrong" is exactly the way I use emacs. I seldom care about the inner workings of emacs and will do the absolute minimum to get it to work the way I want and then move on. I'm reminded over and over again that Emacs patinas really nicely with poorly written elisp in an init file over time. Case in point, I found that org-export is super slow. After profiling it, I found the slow function, copied it, removed the slow part, and advice-add it right back in there[0]. Might this break some other deeply intertwined behavior someplace else? Probably. Does it matter if I'm the only one using it? Nope. [0]https://github.com/alexkehayias/emacs.d/blob/master/init.el#L1148 https://github.com/alexkehayias/emacs.d/blob/master/init.el#...
- rrix2 1y ago
  I've got a handful of little personal optimizations like this, too, they're great
- eviks 1y ago
  > Does it matter if I'm the only one using it? Yes, you yourself can also suffer from that breakage, and worst of all, might no even notice it right away, so have a period of silent issues
  - nitros 1y ago
    Eh, Emacs isn't really a system where broken behaviour goes unnoticed. It either works as you expect or something isn't working correctly.
    - eviks 1y ago
      There is no magical system that can ensure no bug goes unnoticed > or something isn't working correctly. the issue isn't whether a bug exists, it's whether/when you notice this
      - resize2996 1y ago
        You're missing emacs insane observability and tight feedback loops.
imiric 1y ago
Learning and using Emacs is possibly the activity with the highest ROI over time you can do if you work with text for a living. Maybe even if you don't. Every time you modify it, you are improving your workflow. Those changes compound over time so that the system is always familiar, which makes interacting with text, the filesystem, network, and anything else you can manipulate with Elisp, that much easier, faster, and more comfortable. What you end up with is a system that is unique to you. A system that does what you want the way you want it, and never changes unless you want it to. In a world where software constantly changes and breaks, where new editors appear and disappear, using your own version of Emacs is incredibly comforting. There are no surprises, no rugpulls, no radical UI redesigns, no sneaky telemetry or tracking, no ads, no nagware, and so on. Anything you don't like can be removed, changed, or improved. It's not perfect, of course. It's slow, alien in many ways, lags behind in features of modern editors, and has a brutally steep learning curve, especially if you're not familiar with Lisps. It may take you years to appreciate it, and a lifetime to understand it. But that's OK. You don't need to understand all of it. As long as you start the journey, you can learn on the way, and your experience will keep improving.
- donaldihunter 1y ago
  I have been using Emacs for 35 years and I am still learning along the way. It has been the one constant across Solaris, Linux, Windows and macOS for all that time.
  - imiric 1y ago
    That's amazing! It would be very interesting to see what a config spanning 35 years looks like, and what your workflow is. If you could write a blog post about it, I'm sure others would appreciate it as well. I suppose this goes for any Emacs user. There's so much we can learn and be inspired from by seeing how other people use it.
- nextos 1y ago
  Also the default keybindings used by Emacs to do basic text operations are available in many places thanks to GNU Readline and Cocoa, which makes the experience more pleasant.
rml 1y ago
If you want to learn how Org mode works, start by reading outline.el then read Dominik's outline-magic.el then see how far you can get with your own customizations on top of that to augment, e.g. plain markdown text you may find you're doing well at that point and don't need to deal with the 100k+ line beast that is Org, nor its transitive dependencies at that point you will really understand (that part of) Emacs, and will no longer see Org as "a discrete thing", but just "some code someone else wrote" that you can take or leave
swannodette 1y ago
Yes! Recent personal hacks with advice interactively programmed with the help of Claude 4.1 chat session running in Emacs. - popping the global mark to travel backwards to previous edit points would reuse the same Emacs window instead of using a window that is already showing the buffer. Fixed - I would accidentally destroy my window configuration w/ C-x 1. Fixed, use advice to automatically save the window configuration into a register if I invoke the command to remove all other windows. Now I can easily recover if I make that mistake. - I want to be able to select and then scroll any other open window w/o leaving the current one. Fixed - A crazy one. I collect note w/ links or whatever for reading/watching later, these are marked w/ a timestamp. My notes file is not an agenda file, i.e. not filled with todos / tasks. I made a hack to temporarily include the current non-agenda org-mode buffer in the agenda list and then show inactive timestamps. Now I can scan a day/week/month for interesting notes I took. This doesn't interact at all with my real agenda. - org-agenda opens items in weird places, use advice to fix it so that it always appears where I like. - fix inf-clojure so that it uses dep.edn as project root over .git I used IntelliJ happily for 10 years (I was a heavy Emacs user for 10 years before that). While it's true that some things are a little less convenient (I don't use LSP), knowing that I can tailor things exactly to my tastes is a serious breath of fresh air. It used to be I mostly used IntelliJ for work/OSS and Emacs for org-mode. Now the situation is likely reversed. Emacs for work/OSS and IntelliJ only if I need step debugging/global refactoring.
wernk213111 1y ago
[dead]
justinhj 1y ago
Very illustrative of how well thought out the architecture of Emacs is. I mean, extensibility is in the name, of course it's extendable, but I don't think many systems reached this level.

202 points by Karrot_Kream 1y ago

The model of computer use that appeals to me are the one that in theory have a simple system, but the real goal is for you to have a tool that fits your needs. So far it includes the BSDs (Unix), Emacs, and Smalltalk. I've not tried Plan 9 yet. The more I'm learning more about the above, the more I'm believing that most computer problems has been solved since a long time and the focus should be on improving and creating new tools, not reinventing them. PS: Spreadsheets are nice too, but they're still lacking the surrounding helpers that would make them great. There's VBA in excel, but I'm thinking about more like dynamic table that's linked to an endpoint or some commands (Unix's ps). I haven't explored tools like Airbase to see if they fit that vision.

dharmatech 1y ago
Which Airbase tool are you referring to?
- skydhash 1y ago
  My bad. I was referring instead to airtable. It’s SaaS, but I’m talking more about the concepts
josteink 1y ago
> There's VBA in excel, but I'm thinking about more like dynamic table that's linked to an endpoint I believe Excel has PowerBI for this purpose.
smj-edison 1y ago
You might find Glamorous Toolkit[1] and Folk computer[2] in that category too! Full disclaimer, I currently contribute to Folk (it's still pre-alpha but it has some really exciting ideas). [1] https://gtoolkit.com/ https://gtoolkit.com/ [2] https://folk.computer/ https://folk.computer/

alexkehayias 1y ago

Having used emacs for many years, OP's description of "doing things wrong" is exactly the way I use emacs. I seldom care about the inner workings of emacs and will do the absolute minimum to get it to work the way I want and then move on. I'm reminded over and over again that Emacs patinas really nicely with poorly written elisp in an init file over time. Case in point, I found that org-export is super slow. After profiling it, I found the slow function, copied it, removed the slow part, and advice-add it right back in there[0]. Might this break some other deeply intertwined behavior someplace else? Probably. Does it matter if I'm the only one using it? Nope. [0]https://github.com/alexkehayias/emacs.d/blob/master/init.el#L1148 https://github.com/alexkehayias/emacs.d/blob/master/init.el#...

rrix2 1y ago
I've got a handful of little personal optimizations like this, too, they're great
eviks 1y ago
> Does it matter if I'm the only one using it? Yes, you yourself can also suffer from that breakage, and worst of all, might no even notice it right away, so have a period of silent issues
- nitros 1y ago
  Eh, Emacs isn't really a system where broken behaviour goes unnoticed. It either works as you expect or something isn't working correctly.
  - eviks 1y ago
    There is no magical system that can ensure no bug goes unnoticed > or something isn't working correctly. the issue isn't whether a bug exists, it's whether/when you notice this
    - resize2996 1y ago
      You're missing emacs insane observability and tight feedback loops.

imiric 1y ago

Learning and using Emacs is possibly the activity with the highest ROI over time you can do if you work with text for a living. Maybe even if you don't. Every time you modify it, you are improving your workflow. Those changes compound over time so that the system is always familiar, which makes interacting with text, the filesystem, network, and anything else you can manipulate with Elisp, that much easier, faster, and more comfortable. What you end up with is a system that is unique to you. A system that does what you want the way you want it, and never changes unless you want it to. In a world where software constantly changes and breaks, where new editors appear and disappear, using your own version of Emacs is incredibly comforting. There are no surprises, no rugpulls, no radical UI redesigns, no sneaky telemetry or tracking, no ads, no nagware, and so on. Anything you don't like can be removed, changed, or improved. It's not perfect, of course. It's slow, alien in many ways, lags behind in features of modern editors, and has a brutally steep learning curve, especially if you're not familiar with Lisps. It may take you years to appreciate it, and a lifetime to understand it. But that's OK. You don't need to understand all of it. As long as you start the journey, you can learn on the way, and your experience will keep improving.

donaldihunter 1y ago
I have been using Emacs for 35 years and I am still learning along the way. It has been the one constant across Solaris, Linux, Windows and macOS for all that time.
- imiric 1y ago
  That's amazing! It would be very interesting to see what a config spanning 35 years looks like, and what your workflow is. If you could write a blog post about it, I'm sure others would appreciate it as well. I suppose this goes for any Emacs user. There's so much we can learn and be inspired from by seeing how other people use it.
nextos 1y ago
Also the default keybindings used by Emacs to do basic text operations are available in many places thanks to GNU Readline and Cocoa, which makes the experience more pleasant.

rml 1y ago

If you want to learn how Org mode works, start by reading outline.el then read Dominik's outline-magic.el then see how far you can get with your own customizations on top of that to augment, e.g. plain markdown text you may find you're doing well at that point and don't need to deal with the 100k+ line beast that is Org, nor its transitive dependencies at that point you will really understand (that part of) Emacs, and will no longer see Org as "a discrete thing", but just "some code someone else wrote" that you can take or leave

swannodette 1y ago

Yes! Recent personal hacks with advice interactively programmed with the help of Claude 4.1 chat session running in Emacs. - popping the global mark to travel backwards to previous edit points would reuse the same Emacs window instead of using a window that is already showing the buffer. Fixed - I would accidentally destroy my window configuration w/ C-x 1. Fixed, use advice to automatically save the window configuration into a register if I invoke the command to remove all other windows. Now I can easily recover if I make that mistake. - I want to be able to select and then scroll any other open window w/o leaving the current one. Fixed - A crazy one. I collect note w/ links or whatever for reading/watching later, these are marked w/ a timestamp. My notes file is not an agenda file, i.e. not filled with todos / tasks. I made a hack to temporarily include the current non-agenda org-mode buffer in the agenda list and then show inactive timestamps. Now I can scan a day/week/month for interesting notes I took. This doesn't interact at all with my real agenda. - org-agenda opens items in weird places, use advice to fix it so that it always appears where I like. - fix inf-clojure so that it uses dep.edn as project root over .git I used IntelliJ happily for 10 years (I was a heavy Emacs user for 10 years before that). While it's true that some things are a little less convenient (I don't use LSP), knowing that I can tailor things exactly to my tastes is a serious breath of fresh air. It used to be I mostly used IntelliJ for work/OSS and Emacs for org-mode. Now the situation is likely reversed. Emacs for work/OSS and IntelliJ only if I need step debugging/global refactoring.

wernk213111 1y ago

[dead]

justinhj 1y ago

Very illustrative of how well thought out the architecture of Emacs is. I mean, extensibility is in the name, of course it's extendable, but I don't think many systems reached this level.