12 ms·

Emacs 24.4 released

381 points by auvi 12y ago

peatmoss 12y ago
Can't wait until homebrew is updated to try this out. A part of me is morbidly curious to try out the new web browser. This may be the impetus I've been needing to make the jump to GNUs for my email.
- fafner 12y ago
  The web browser (named eww) is of course limited by the display engine of Emacs. So don't expect too much. But for reading documentation in html format it works well for me so far and I guess that's the biggest use-case for it.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
    - fafner 12y ago
      It can display images. It seems to even support HTML5 SVG. The HTML rendering engine (shr) was originally written as part of the Gnus project for exactly that task: To render HTML in RSS and email. The browser (eww) just adds http support via url.el and a user front end.
webkike 12y ago
I've been going off like a broken record in the comment pages for these posts, since I'm such an Emacs fanatic. But I'll say it again, this release is great! Rectangular mark mode, better web browser -- Emacs hasn't stopped getting better
- sillysaurus3 12y ago
  Emacs has a web browser?
  - nandhp 12y ago
    > Highlights of this release include: A built-in web browser (M-x eww)
  - ephemeralgomi 12y ago
    It's had w3 for quite a while. 'eww' is new.
    - Derbasti 12y ago
      IIRC, w3 was an external program while eww is built entirely in elisp.
      - chriswarbo 12y ago
        w3 is written in ELisp and runs in Emacs http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/w3 http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/w3 w3m is an external program, which Emacs has a wrapper for http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/w3m http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/w3m
        Derbasti 12y ago
        My apologies then, since I did not remember correctly. Thank you for enlightening!
    - ams6110 12y ago
      It's still text-mode though (it will show images inline). There was a project to integrate webkit into an emacs browser mode but not sure where that stands.
  - davidw 12y ago
    It has sockets, so... pretty much anything you can do with those, you can do with Emacs. * Email (gnus) * NNTP (gnus) * IRC Come to mind offhand.
    - stinkytaco 12y ago
- fafner 12y ago
  Rectangular mark mode is really awesome. It makes working with rectangles a lot easier. It is now so well integrated into my workflow that I'm really annoyed when I have to use an older Emacs version.
  - davexunit 12y ago
    I'm very excited to try it out. I knew about the web browser, but I didn't know about this until I read the release notes.
  - shepard 12y ago
    Interesting - could you please provide some examples of how are you using rectangular mark mode? I have never used it before, so I'm clearly missing something cool here...
    - dietrichepp 12y ago
      Any time you're working with tabular data, or data that is aligned horizontally, it's helpful. For example, I might need to delete a prefix from a list of declarations. I often use macros for the same kinds of tasks, with each macro editing a line and putting the cursor on the next line afterwards.
      - chr 12y ago
        apply-macro-to-region-lines does not need macros to put the cursor on the next line. From the manual: The command C-x C-k r (apply-macro-to-region-lines) repeats the last defined keyboard macro on each line that begins in the region. It does this line by line, by moving point to the beginning of the line and then executing the macro.
      - gcv 12y ago
        Take a look at multiple cursor mode for this.
  - craigching 12y ago
    It's funny, I started using Emacs around 1991 or '92 or so (at University), then I changed to Windows development in about '93 and switched my editor to BRIEF which had very nice columnar editing capabilities. I used BRIEF for a few years until I moved away from strictly Windows development so I moved back to Emacs. Columnar editing was something I missed so much! But now that I've been away from it, it's hard for me to recall what I used to use it for. Occasionally I do find that I wish I had it, but I remember feeling so crippled without it for a long time! So, can't wait to get back into it again now that it's available. I think it's one of those things that you start using it and find more and more things to do with it as time goes on. Just my $0.02 anyway.
- RexRollman 12y ago
  Is there a screenshot somewhere?
  - stronglikedan 12y ago
    An older link, but: http://emacsredux.com/blog/2014/01/01/a-peek-at-emacs-24-dot-4-rectangular-selection/ http://emacsredux.com/blog/2014/01/01/a-peek-at-emacs-24-dot...
- melling 12y ago
  You know what Emacs is? It's a big Lisp interpreter. It was made to be extensible so that it could do anything. It could be your IDE, for example. http://cedet.sourceforge.net http://cedet.sourceforge.net The problem is that it isn't a good enough Lisp engine to be very good at anything beyond the great text editor, which it has been since the early 1980's. Avoiding the really hard problems and building a better emacs browser doesn't really help anyone. At some point, people will realize that the concept behind Emacs is great but could be better done in another high performance language. JavaScript in a browser? Clojure?
  - webkike 12y ago
    What? Emacs isn't a big Lisp interpreter. It's a text editor that is extensible with Emacs Lisp. Sure it contains a Lisp interpreter, but saying that Emacs is only a Lisp interpreter implies that the entirety of the text editor is implemented in Lisp, which is clearly not the case. I use Emacs as a text editor, which means I use it to edit anything that has text. Granted that is a huge part of my computing needs. I don't want Emacs to be able to do anything. I already have an operating system and a text editor.
    - melling 12y ago
      Nope, it's mostly a Lisp interpreter. Stallman had to build some of the low-level stuff in C then he built the rest of the editor in Lisp. "We used the same idea here (in the hybrid technique), that most of the editor would be written in Lisp, but certain parts of it that had to run particularly fast would be written at a lower level" http://www.gnu.org/gnu/rms-lisp.html http://www.gnu.org/gnu/rms-lisp.html That's the beauty of Emacs. Considering that he built it in the early 80s, you have to wonder if the whole thing couldn't be written Lisp today.
      - theoh 12y ago
        There's some kind of paradox here. You say it's mostly a lisp interpreter, but then, also, mostly editor functionality written in lisp. I'm not sure you can have it both ways...
- mark_l_watson 12y ago
  I agree - a great update. I especially like it when I am in -nw terminal mode and being able to use F10 to get access to the menu items I don't remember the shortcuts for.
- qmr 12y ago
  > better web browser Hah, seems like an argument for vim.
- imakesnowflakes 12y ago
  > better web browser... I couldn't get logins to bitbucket work with eww, because it seems it is not sending the referrer headers. I couldn't find any way to turn it on..
baby 12y ago
> A built-in web browser (M-x eww) What ! Anyone has screenshots of that? Is there a windows release somewhere?
- craigching 12y ago
  This is where I generally pick up Windows releases (though I don't use Windows much anymore): http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/emacs/windows/ http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/emacs/windows/ 24.4 is not yet there though.
  - harperlee 12y ago
    Does anybody have an idea of how much time is the windows version release usually delayed? I´m finding myself checking the page frequently, but there's no related info (that I can find, at least)
- fafner 12y ago
  http://larsmagne23.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/eww.png http://larsmagne23.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/eww.png It's from an early version though (over a year old)
- viksit 12y ago
  Is it me or is that browser (after looking at the screenshot) really "eww"?
  - nine_k 12y ago
    Okay for technical docs, an occasional Wikipedia article, etc. It's not a replacement for Firefox or Chrome.
  - fafner 12y ago
    Well it is limited by Emacs' display engine. It is obviously not supposed to replace your default browser. But it is usually good enough to view html documentation. Which is really something you want inside your editor.
craigching 12y ago
If you're looking for GNU emacs on Mac OS X, this is the place I use [1]. Note that it's not there just yet, so be a bit patient. They've been doing RC builds, you can seem them here [2]. [1] -- http://emacsformacosx.com/ http://emacsformacosx.com/ [2] -- http://emacsformacosx.com/builds http://emacsformacosx.com/builds
- viksit 12y ago
  Weirdly, 24.4rc1 from the builds section is really wonky on my OS X Mavericks install. On scroll, the buffers go "above" the window and the top bar breaks up into tiny pieces and scrolls with the content. Ugh.
  - conistonwater 12y ago
    Perhaps some weird kind of font issue? Try setting a different default font, and seeing if that does anything. (The font popup is bound to Option-t by default, I think.)
- cenazoic 12y ago
  This is the best discussion of the different versions of emacs available for MacOS I've seen (including emacsformacos): http://emacs.stackexchange.com/questions/271/what-is-the-difference-between-aquamacs-and-other-mac-versions-of-emacs http://emacs.stackexchange.com/questions/271/what-is-the-dif... Short version: Lunaryorn: "I used to get them from Emacs for Mac OS X, but now I use Homebrew, because it supports more libraries, notably GNU TLS for encrypted network connections. All in all: Use brew install emacs --HEAD --use-git-head --cocoa --with-gnutls --with-rsvg --with-imagemagick :)"
  - craigching 12y ago
    Thanks for that! I went through this on my own quite some time ago and came to my own conclusion that GNU emacs is the one for me, especially since I do program on mac os x, Linux and Windows. EDIT: Well, now that I've read that in full, I'm thinking of giving the author's conclusion a try: > All in all: Use brew install emacs --HEAD --use-git-head --cocoa --with-gnutls --with-rsvg --with-imagemagick :)
jpfr 12y ago
Besides emacs 24.4 being an awesome release by itself, it also means esr can finally transition the development to git. That will render the project a lot more accessible for new developers and ad-hoc bugfixing.
- dfc 12y ago
  For anyone that is interested in testing out the new git repo: git://gitorious.org/emacs-transition/review6.git It is remarkably fast compared to the bzr repository. ESR's conversion takes 10 hours to complete.
1ris 12y ago
OT: What happened to Guileemacs?
- davexunit 12y ago
  There's been some really good progress lately. http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/GuileEmacs http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/GuileEmacs
- jml7c5 12y ago
  See http://lwn.net/Articles/615220/ http://lwn.net/Articles/615220/ and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8328206 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8328206 for recent discussions of the subject.
ezequiel-garzon 12y ago
In Ubuntu I'm unable to activate orgtbl-mode unless I first switch to org-mode. This didn't happen with Emacs 23. Has anybody experienced the same? How can I check if this has been reported? Thanks. Edit: Seriously, people? You take the time to downvote and not to point in a direction to contribute to make Emacs better? So much for the attacks on Stack Overflow and its strict policies and policing... And anyway, how off topic is this comment? Peace.
- technomancy 12y ago
  Hacker News is not a great place for bug reports, just saying.
  - ezequiel-garzon 12y ago
    I'm asking for guidance, since I don't know where to file what I consider a clear bug, and where to check first. (Ubuntu? GNU?) Instead, I already received a downvote and this... Thanks, anyway.
    - andrewflnr 12y ago
      Probably an Emacs-specific support forum would have been a good choice, assuming you used Google first and didn't find anything. HN certainly was not. I didn't downvote you, but it looks a lot like you didn't try to do your own homework, because it's not that hard. Either one of the places you mentioned would have been better. That's probably why you were downvoted.
      - ezequiel-garzon 12y ago
        Thank you, Andrew. I guess I can also see why I could be downvoted, though it is sad that those with downvoting powers don't let not-so-thrilling comments "just sink" to the bottom of the page instead of downvoting, which in my mind should be left to destructive, offensive or just completely unrelated stuff. Best regards.
    - 12y ago
flyrain 12y ago
Great job! I really like the new brower: eww, and develop a plugin for dictionary in Emacs.
dimitar 12y ago
Is there a way to get a list of mirrors that actually have it? I got tired of searching them so I downloaded it from GNU.
CDRdude 12y ago
I'm a comparative youngin to most of the people here, and I've never tried emacs. I'd like to learn my way around it someday, but I don't know how high of a priority I should place on it. I've managed to pick up enough vim to make my life easier, would learning my way around emacs also get me a productivity boost? How good is evil mode?
- viksit 12y ago
  I found out about evil mode two days ago from the 24.4rc1 post, and so far, it feels like vim but a little wonky. The great thing is pressing C-z in evil mode toggles between vim/emacs modes and is very convenient.
  - hello_asdf 12y ago
    Seriously? I played around with emacs this weekend, and used it exclusively at work today.. I kept restarting it because I thought evil was bugging out. I'd agree that evil mode is quite nice, and emacs seems like something useful to know. It really depends what you prefer. I'm trying out emacs specifically for the formatting plugins as vim seems to fall behind in that regard.
- VLM 12y ago
  "would learning my way around emacs also get me a productivity boost?" No. Although I first used emacs roughly 22 years ago so my memory might be rusty, the learning curve was extremely steep. Its not a GUI app with low maximum performance but very short learning curve, its more like something you'll have to mess with for a month to year to wrap your brain around. Its like learning dwarf fortress vs angry birds. In the very long run you'll probably like DF more, but not for the first day / week / month.
  - elwell 12y ago
    I feel like it took me about a month to get to the point where I was glad I had invested the time to learn.
  - chetanahuja 12y ago
jazzychad 12y ago
I think this thread is my best shot at getting this question answered.. I've been using Emacs 23.x for the last several years because the buffer-switcher behavior changed in Emacs 24 and I have no idea how (or if it's even possible) to get the previous behavior back? In Emacs 23 and below (for as long as I've used Emacs), I would change buffers by hitting F10-b (F10 brings up menu, b is shortcut for Buffers). Then there is a nice little list of open buffers and the first letter of the filename is usually the shortcut to switch to that buffer. This made it really fast to switch back and forth between multiple files (I want to go to index.html == F10-b-i ; now I want to switch back to about.html == F10-b-a), it was very simple. Emacs 24 changed that behavior and so the quick switching between buffers based on the first letter of their filename went away. Does anyone else know what I'm talking about? Is it possible to get the previous behavior in 24? I'm slowly finding packages that won't compile in Emacs 23 anymore b/c they depend on new Emacs 24 elisp functions. I only ever use Emacs from inside a terminal (emacs -nw), so that's why I'm navigating buffers by the F10 menu. EDIT: Well, I may be an idiot. I just downloaded the latest 24 build and it seems to be working as before again! Not sure when this changed, but maybe this is now a non-issue. I feel a bit silly, but maybe this will help someone else?
- ilyabraude 12y ago
  I may be missing something, but try C-x b instead of F-10 b
  - jazzychad 12y ago
    That's slightly different. It will prompt for a buffer name, which you can type in and tab-complete, but it's not quite as fast as the one-key switching (also it doesn't show a list of buffers unless you try to tab-complete while the prompt is empty).
    - sjm 12y ago
      With ido-everywhere, flx-ido and ido-vertical-mode you can get nice, fast buffer-switching with fuzzy matching via C-x b. See these two screenshots for an example: http://imgur.com/a/sZk8m http://imgur.com/a/sZk8m
jmount 12y ago
Building on OSX Mavericks (assuming XCode and XQuartz already around) 1) Download from http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/ http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/ emacs-24.4.tar.gz emacs-24.4.tar.gz.sig 2) Confirm: gpg --keyserver pgp.mit.edu --recv-keys A0B0F199 gpg --verify emacs-24.4.tar.gz.sig 3) Build (from INSTALL): cd emacs-24.4 ./configure --with-jpeg=no --with-gif=no --with-tiff=no make src/emacs -Q make install 4) run: /usr/local/bin/emacs
- sjm 12y ago
  Alternatively, until homebrew is updated you can run brew edit emacs and change the url and sha256 to match 24.4, then run brew install emacs with whatever options you would like (brew options emacs for a list). I haven't tested this yet, but it should work, and I will report back after I've tried. edit: So this did work, I used the .tar.xz with sha256 47e391170db4ca0a3c724530c7050655f6d573a711956b4cd84693c194a9d4fd. One thing to note is that the old 24.3 stable formula has a bunch of patches applied that are no longer required, so you need to edit those out as well (this area: https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew/blob/master/Library/Formula/emacs.rb#L38-L66 https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew/blob/master/Library/For...).
  - dgempesaw 12y ago
    Update a few hours later: without having tried it myself, it looks like the formula for emacs has been updated to 24.4: https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew/commits/a0b095b/Library/Formula/emacs.rb https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew/commits/a0b095b/Library...
    - sigzero 12y ago
      Sweet. Installing it when I get home.
    - hollerith 12y ago
      The Homebrew package for Emacs with Mac-specific changes by a professor named YAMAMOTO Mitsuharu has also been updated: https://github.com/railwaycat/homebrew-emacsmacport/commits/master https://github.com/railwaycat/homebrew-emacsmacport/commits/... For 2 or 3 years now, whenever I have compared the two, the current version of "Mitsuharu" Emacs has always had fewer Cocoa-related bugs than the current (release) version of "FSF Emacs" (i.e., Emacs without the professor's patches applied). I am writing this comment because this Mitsuharu fellow seems very reticent about promoting his own (excellent) work.
paseante 12y ago
Shameless spam: https://github.com/kovan/dopemacs https://github.com/kovan/dopemacs
jjshimezres 12y ago
Check out http://clashofclanshelper.com/ http://clashofclanshelper.com/ - I got free Clash of Clans gems here! Get yous too in less than two minutes!! Couldnt believe at first but it really works!(y71n8meUzs)
lstrope 12y ago
EWW works well even in a terminal!
hrjet 12y ago
I am not an Emacs user. A long time Vim user who is always on the fence; evil mode got me interested in Emacs again. Can anyone please shed some light on the browser? Is it implemented in pure Lisp? Is it graphical? Does it support javascript?
- tuhdo 12y ago
  It supports html and css, but not Javascript. It is implemented in pure Elisp. I wrote a few introduction guides to Emacs and its ecosystem: http://tuhdo.github.io/ http://tuhdo.github.io/ . The guides do not include evil-mode though, as I use Emacs key bindings. But installing evil-mode is easy, and you can immediately use Vim key bindings for editing.
MarcScott 12y ago
Just checked and it's now available to brew
jsilence 12y ago
For distraction free writing, M-x toggle-frame-fullscreen and (set-fringe-mode '(120 . 120)). There used to be a bug in earlier emacs Versions requiring a Patch for proper fullscreen. Have not tried this for a while, but now it seems to work nice and smooth.
- throwaway20148 12y ago
  I like writeroom-mode[1] for distraction free writing. I only use emacs in a terminal that's always fullscreen, but I imagine it works just fine in any case. https://github.com/joostkremers/writeroom-mode https://github.com/joostkremers/writeroom-mode
imakesnowflakes 12y ago
Can some one tell me why windows Emacs still does not have a working shell? One cannot easily run ssh from a shell in windows emacs. I have found that I cannot push to a bitbucket repo that uses http authentication too from the shell. But if I run them from a cmd window, these works fine. What is the technical issue that is preventing emacs from fixing this?
- throwaway20148 12y ago
  I don't use windows, but recently read over this thread on /r/emacs with casual interest. Maybe it will help? http://www.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/2jjf2f/i_just_got_ssh_working_with_emacs_in_windows_with/ http://www.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/2jjf2f/i_just_got_ssh...
  - imakesnowflakes 12y ago
    That is me! That is why I said 'One cannot easily run ssh..'. There are work arounds, like using plink or cygwin emacs and more. But it seems that every one of them is broken in some aspect. For eg, If I use cygwin, the cygwin file paths send to other command line programs (non cygwin) wont work with them. When using plink, the display of escape sequences in the command prompt, like "^[]0;vagrant@ubuntu-14:", and difficulty in working with programs like vagrant that uses ssh indirectly. And as far as I saw, none of them provides a working auto completion in the context of remote file system. Another thing is that I cannot push to a remote repo using http authentication.
    - throwaway20148 12y ago
      Haha, wow. I didn't put the usernames together. Good luck and I hope you figure out a solution!
- cbsmith 12y ago
  > What is the technical issue that is preventing emacs from fixing this? 1) Windows employs a very different model for console IO and shells in general. It's a job to do it right. 2) You haven't contributed a solution yet.
b3b0p 12y ago
If one wants to start using Emacs is there a recommended starter package that is recommended over others instead of starting from scratch that can be learned from over time? I want to start using Emacs, but starting with a blank slate leaves much to be desired. Especially when a someone new to Emacs doesn't know what's available or what can be done or how.
- mordocai 12y ago
  There are a few. I personally started off of a co-workers emacs.d instead, so I can't tell you which one I like. Here is a list of some of the popular ones: http://ergoemacs.org/misc/list_of_emacs_starter_kits.html http://ergoemacs.org/misc/list_of_emacs_starter_kits.html. Here is some discussion about how scary starter kits can be too, and some advice on learning emacs: http://www.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/1udtd1/starting_emacs_with_preludestarter_kits_scares_me/ http://www.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/1udtd1/starting_emacs....
- chrisdone 12y ago
  I think if you're the kind of user who just wants an editor that does things for you, you'd be better off sticking with what you have already chosen that satisfies your list of features. Deciding to use Emacs for its features is a bad reason. If you're interested in Emacs for its extensibility then I would consider it a worthy investment. Go through the tutorial, find out how to query docs, extend keybindings and modes and things like that, and then I would recommend my Elisp programming guide: https://github.com/chrisdone/elisp-guide https://github.com/chrisdone/elisp-guide

381 points by auvi 12y ago

Can't wait until homebrew is updated to try this out. A part of me is morbidly curious to try out the new web browser. This may be the impetus I've been needing to make the jump to GNUs for my email.

fafner 12y ago
The web browser (named eww) is of course limited by the display engine of Emacs. So don't expect too much. But for reading documentation in html format it works well for me so far and I guess that's the biggest use-case for it.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
  - fafner 12y ago
    It can display images. It seems to even support HTML5 SVG. The HTML rendering engine (shr) was originally written as part of the Gnus project for exactly that task: To render HTML in RSS and email. The browser (eww) just adds http support via url.el and a user front end.

webkike 12y ago

I've been going off like a broken record in the comment pages for these posts, since I'm such an Emacs fanatic. But I'll say it again, this release is great! Rectangular mark mode, better web browser -- Emacs hasn't stopped getting better

sillysaurus3 12y ago
Emacs has a web browser?
- nandhp 12y ago
  > Highlights of this release include: A built-in web browser (M-x eww)
- ephemeralgomi 12y ago
  It's had w3 for quite a while. 'eww' is new.
  - Derbasti 12y ago
    IIRC, w3 was an external program while eww is built entirely in elisp.
    - chriswarbo 12y ago
      w3 is written in ELisp and runs in Emacs http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/w3 http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/w3 w3m is an external program, which Emacs has a wrapper for http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/w3m http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/w3m
      - Derbasti 12y ago
        My apologies then, since I did not remember correctly. Thank you for enlightening!
  - ams6110 12y ago
    It's still text-mode though (it will show images inline). There was a project to integrate webkit into an emacs browser mode but not sure where that stands.
- davidw 12y ago
  It has sockets, so... pretty much anything you can do with those, you can do with Emacs. * Email (gnus) * NNTP (gnus) * IRC Come to mind offhand.
  - stinkytaco 12y ago
fafner 12y ago
Rectangular mark mode is really awesome. It makes working with rectangles a lot easier. It is now so well integrated into my workflow that I'm really annoyed when I have to use an older Emacs version.
- davexunit 12y ago
  I'm very excited to try it out. I knew about the web browser, but I didn't know about this until I read the release notes.
- shepard 12y ago
  Interesting - could you please provide some examples of how are you using rectangular mark mode? I have never used it before, so I'm clearly missing something cool here...
  - dietrichepp 12y ago
    Any time you're working with tabular data, or data that is aligned horizontally, it's helpful. For example, I might need to delete a prefix from a list of declarations. I often use macros for the same kinds of tasks, with each macro editing a line and putting the cursor on the next line afterwards.
    - chr 12y ago
      apply-macro-to-region-lines does not need macros to put the cursor on the next line. From the manual: The command C-x C-k r (apply-macro-to-region-lines) repeats the last defined keyboard macro on each line that begins in the region. It does this line by line, by moving point to the beginning of the line and then executing the macro.
    - gcv 12y ago
      Take a look at multiple cursor mode for this.
- craigching 12y ago
  It's funny, I started using Emacs around 1991 or '92 or so (at University), then I changed to Windows development in about '93 and switched my editor to BRIEF which had very nice columnar editing capabilities. I used BRIEF for a few years until I moved away from strictly Windows development so I moved back to Emacs. Columnar editing was something I missed so much! But now that I've been away from it, it's hard for me to recall what I used to use it for. Occasionally I do find that I wish I had it, but I remember feeling so crippled without it for a long time! So, can't wait to get back into it again now that it's available. I think it's one of those things that you start using it and find more and more things to do with it as time goes on. Just my $0.02 anyway.
RexRollman 12y ago
Is there a screenshot somewhere?
- stronglikedan 12y ago
  An older link, but: http://emacsredux.com/blog/2014/01/01/a-peek-at-emacs-24-dot-4-rectangular-selection/ http://emacsredux.com/blog/2014/01/01/a-peek-at-emacs-24-dot...
melling 12y ago
You know what Emacs is? It's a big Lisp interpreter. It was made to be extensible so that it could do anything. It could be your IDE, for example. http://cedet.sourceforge.net http://cedet.sourceforge.net The problem is that it isn't a good enough Lisp engine to be very good at anything beyond the great text editor, which it has been since the early 1980's. Avoiding the really hard problems and building a better emacs browser doesn't really help anyone. At some point, people will realize that the concept behind Emacs is great but could be better done in another high performance language. JavaScript in a browser? Clojure?
- webkike 12y ago
  What? Emacs isn't a big Lisp interpreter. It's a text editor that is extensible with Emacs Lisp. Sure it contains a Lisp interpreter, but saying that Emacs is only a Lisp interpreter implies that the entirety of the text editor is implemented in Lisp, which is clearly not the case. I use Emacs as a text editor, which means I use it to edit anything that has text. Granted that is a huge part of my computing needs. I don't want Emacs to be able to do anything. I already have an operating system and a text editor.
  - melling 12y ago
    Nope, it's mostly a Lisp interpreter. Stallman had to build some of the low-level stuff in C then he built the rest of the editor in Lisp. "We used the same idea here (in the hybrid technique), that most of the editor would be written in Lisp, but certain parts of it that had to run particularly fast would be written at a lower level" http://www.gnu.org/gnu/rms-lisp.html http://www.gnu.org/gnu/rms-lisp.html That's the beauty of Emacs. Considering that he built it in the early 80s, you have to wonder if the whole thing couldn't be written Lisp today.
    - theoh 12y ago
      There's some kind of paradox here. You say it's mostly a lisp interpreter, but then, also, mostly editor functionality written in lisp. I'm not sure you can have it both ways...
mark_l_watson 12y ago
I agree - a great update. I especially like it when I am in -nw terminal mode and being able to use F10 to get access to the menu items I don't remember the shortcuts for.
qmr 12y ago
> better web browser Hah, seems like an argument for vim.
imakesnowflakes 12y ago
> better web browser... I couldn't get logins to bitbucket work with eww, because it seems it is not sending the referrer headers. I couldn't find any way to turn it on..

baby 12y ago

> A built-in web browser (M-x eww) What ! Anyone has screenshots of that? Is there a windows release somewhere?

craigching 12y ago
This is where I generally pick up Windows releases (though I don't use Windows much anymore): http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/emacs/windows/ http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/emacs/windows/ 24.4 is not yet there though.
- harperlee 12y ago
  Does anybody have an idea of how much time is the windows version release usually delayed? I´m finding myself checking the page frequently, but there's no related info (that I can find, at least)
fafner 12y ago
http://larsmagne23.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/eww.png http://larsmagne23.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/eww.png It's from an early version though (over a year old)
viksit 12y ago
Is it me or is that browser (after looking at the screenshot) really "eww"?
- nine_k 12y ago
  Okay for technical docs, an occasional Wikipedia article, etc. It's not a replacement for Firefox or Chrome.
- fafner 12y ago
  Well it is limited by Emacs' display engine. It is obviously not supposed to replace your default browser. But it is usually good enough to view html documentation. Which is really something you want inside your editor.

craigching 12y ago

If you're looking for GNU emacs on Mac OS X, this is the place I use [1]. Note that it's not there just yet, so be a bit patient. They've been doing RC builds, you can seem them here [2]. [1] -- http://emacsformacosx.com/ http://emacsformacosx.com/ [2] -- http://emacsformacosx.com/builds http://emacsformacosx.com/builds

viksit 12y ago
Weirdly, 24.4rc1 from the builds section is really wonky on my OS X Mavericks install. On scroll, the buffers go "above" the window and the top bar breaks up into tiny pieces and scrolls with the content. Ugh.
- conistonwater 12y ago
  Perhaps some weird kind of font issue? Try setting a different default font, and seeing if that does anything. (The font popup is bound to Option-t by default, I think.)
cenazoic 12y ago
This is the best discussion of the different versions of emacs available for MacOS I've seen (including emacsformacos): http://emacs.stackexchange.com/questions/271/what-is-the-difference-between-aquamacs-and-other-mac-versions-of-emacs http://emacs.stackexchange.com/questions/271/what-is-the-dif... Short version: Lunaryorn: "I used to get them from Emacs for Mac OS X, but now I use Homebrew, because it supports more libraries, notably GNU TLS for encrypted network connections. All in all: Use brew install emacs --HEAD --use-git-head --cocoa --with-gnutls --with-rsvg --with-imagemagick :)"
- craigching 12y ago
  Thanks for that! I went through this on my own quite some time ago and came to my own conclusion that GNU emacs is the one for me, especially since I do program on mac os x, Linux and Windows. EDIT: Well, now that I've read that in full, I'm thinking of giving the author's conclusion a try: > All in all: Use brew install emacs --HEAD --use-git-head --cocoa --with-gnutls --with-rsvg --with-imagemagick :)

jpfr 12y ago

Besides emacs 24.4 being an awesome release by itself, it also means esr can finally transition the development to git. That will render the project a lot more accessible for new developers and ad-hoc bugfixing.

dfc 12y ago
For anyone that is interested in testing out the new git repo: git://gitorious.org/emacs-transition/review6.git It is remarkably fast compared to the bzr repository. ESR's conversion takes 10 hours to complete.

1ris 12y ago

OT: What happened to Guileemacs?

davexunit 12y ago
There's been some really good progress lately. http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/GuileEmacs http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/GuileEmacs
jml7c5 12y ago
See http://lwn.net/Articles/615220/ http://lwn.net/Articles/615220/ and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8328206 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8328206 for recent discussions of the subject.

ezequiel-garzon 12y ago

In Ubuntu I'm unable to activate orgtbl-mode unless I first switch to org-mode. This didn't happen with Emacs 23. Has anybody experienced the same? How can I check if this has been reported? Thanks. Edit: Seriously, people? You take the time to downvote and not to point in a direction to contribute to make Emacs better? So much for the attacks on Stack Overflow and its strict policies and policing... And anyway, how off topic is this comment? Peace.

technomancy 12y ago
Hacker News is not a great place for bug reports, just saying.
- ezequiel-garzon 12y ago
  I'm asking for guidance, since I don't know where to file what I consider a clear bug, and where to check first. (Ubuntu? GNU?) Instead, I already received a downvote and this... Thanks, anyway.
  - andrewflnr 12y ago
    Probably an Emacs-specific support forum would have been a good choice, assuming you used Google first and didn't find anything. HN certainly was not. I didn't downvote you, but it looks a lot like you didn't try to do your own homework, because it's not that hard. Either one of the places you mentioned would have been better. That's probably why you were downvoted.
    - ezequiel-garzon 12y ago
      Thank you, Andrew. I guess I can also see why I could be downvoted, though it is sad that those with downvoting powers don't let not-so-thrilling comments "just sink" to the bottom of the page instead of downvoting, which in my mind should be left to destructive, offensive or just completely unrelated stuff. Best regards.
  - 12y ago

flyrain 12y ago

Great job! I really like the new brower: eww, and develop a plugin for dictionary in Emacs.

dimitar 12y ago

Is there a way to get a list of mirrors that actually have it? I got tired of searching them so I downloaded it from GNU.

CDRdude 12y ago

I'm a comparative youngin to most of the people here, and I've never tried emacs. I'd like to learn my way around it someday, but I don't know how high of a priority I should place on it. I've managed to pick up enough vim to make my life easier, would learning my way around emacs also get me a productivity boost? How good is evil mode?

viksit 12y ago
I found out about evil mode two days ago from the 24.4rc1 post, and so far, it feels like vim but a little wonky. The great thing is pressing C-z in evil mode toggles between vim/emacs modes and is very convenient.
- hello_asdf 12y ago
  Seriously? I played around with emacs this weekend, and used it exclusively at work today.. I kept restarting it because I thought evil was bugging out. I'd agree that evil mode is quite nice, and emacs seems like something useful to know. It really depends what you prefer. I'm trying out emacs specifically for the formatting plugins as vim seems to fall behind in that regard.
VLM 12y ago
"would learning my way around emacs also get me a productivity boost?" No. Although I first used emacs roughly 22 years ago so my memory might be rusty, the learning curve was extremely steep. Its not a GUI app with low maximum performance but very short learning curve, its more like something you'll have to mess with for a month to year to wrap your brain around. Its like learning dwarf fortress vs angry birds. In the very long run you'll probably like DF more, but not for the first day / week / month.
- elwell 12y ago
  I feel like it took me about a month to get to the point where I was glad I had invested the time to learn.
- chetanahuja 12y ago

jazzychad 12y ago

I think this thread is my best shot at getting this question answered.. I've been using Emacs 23.x for the last several years because the buffer-switcher behavior changed in Emacs 24 and I have no idea how (or if it's even possible) to get the previous behavior back? In Emacs 23 and below (for as long as I've used Emacs), I would change buffers by hitting F10-b (F10 brings up menu, b is shortcut for Buffers). Then there is a nice little list of open buffers and the first letter of the filename is usually the shortcut to switch to that buffer. This made it really fast to switch back and forth between multiple files (I want to go to index.html == F10-b-i ; now I want to switch back to about.html == F10-b-a), it was very simple. Emacs 24 changed that behavior and so the quick switching between buffers based on the first letter of their filename went away. Does anyone else know what I'm talking about? Is it possible to get the previous behavior in 24? I'm slowly finding packages that won't compile in Emacs 23 anymore b/c they depend on new Emacs 24 elisp functions. I only ever use Emacs from inside a terminal (emacs -nw), so that's why I'm navigating buffers by the F10 menu. EDIT: Well, I may be an idiot. I just downloaded the latest 24 build and it seems to be working as before again! Not sure when this changed, but maybe this is now a non-issue. I feel a bit silly, but maybe this will help someone else?

ilyabraude 12y ago
I may be missing something, but try C-x b instead of F-10 b
- jazzychad 12y ago
  That's slightly different. It will prompt for a buffer name, which you can type in and tab-complete, but it's not quite as fast as the one-key switching (also it doesn't show a list of buffers unless you try to tab-complete while the prompt is empty).
  - sjm 12y ago
    With ido-everywhere, flx-ido and ido-vertical-mode you can get nice, fast buffer-switching with fuzzy matching via C-x b. See these two screenshots for an example: http://imgur.com/a/sZk8m http://imgur.com/a/sZk8m

jmount 12y ago

Building on OSX Mavericks (assuming XCode and XQuartz already around) 1) Download from http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/ http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/ emacs-24.4.tar.gz emacs-24.4.tar.gz.sig 2) Confirm: gpg --keyserver pgp.mit.edu --recv-keys A0B0F199 gpg --verify emacs-24.4.tar.gz.sig 3) Build (from INSTALL): cd emacs-24.4 ./configure --with-jpeg=no --with-gif=no --with-tiff=no make src/emacs -Q make install 4) run: /usr/local/bin/emacs

sjm 12y ago
Alternatively, until homebrew is updated you can run brew edit emacs and change the url and sha256 to match 24.4, then run brew install emacs with whatever options you would like (brew options emacs for a list). I haven't tested this yet, but it should work, and I will report back after I've tried. edit: So this did work, I used the .tar.xz with sha256 47e391170db4ca0a3c724530c7050655f6d573a711956b4cd84693c194a9d4fd. One thing to note is that the old 24.3 stable formula has a bunch of patches applied that are no longer required, so you need to edit those out as well (this area: https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew/blob/master/Library/Formula/emacs.rb#L38-L66 https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew/blob/master/Library/For...).
- dgempesaw 12y ago
  Update a few hours later: without having tried it myself, it looks like the formula for emacs has been updated to 24.4: https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew/commits/a0b095b/Library/Formula/emacs.rb https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew/commits/a0b095b/Library...
  - sigzero 12y ago
    Sweet. Installing it when I get home.
  - hollerith 12y ago
    The Homebrew package for Emacs with Mac-specific changes by a professor named YAMAMOTO Mitsuharu has also been updated: https://github.com/railwaycat/homebrew-emacsmacport/commits/master https://github.com/railwaycat/homebrew-emacsmacport/commits/... For 2 or 3 years now, whenever I have compared the two, the current version of "Mitsuharu" Emacs has always had fewer Cocoa-related bugs than the current (release) version of "FSF Emacs" (i.e., Emacs without the professor's patches applied). I am writing this comment because this Mitsuharu fellow seems very reticent about promoting his own (excellent) work.

paseante 12y ago

Shameless spam: https://github.com/kovan/dopemacs https://github.com/kovan/dopemacs

jjshimezres 12y ago

Check out http://clashofclanshelper.com/ http://clashofclanshelper.com/ - I got free Clash of Clans gems here! Get yous too in less than two minutes!! Couldnt believe at first but it really works!(y71n8meUzs)

lstrope 12y ago

EWW works well even in a terminal!

hrjet 12y ago

I am not an Emacs user. A long time Vim user who is always on the fence; evil mode got me interested in Emacs again. Can anyone please shed some light on the browser? Is it implemented in pure Lisp? Is it graphical? Does it support javascript?

tuhdo 12y ago
It supports html and css, but not Javascript. It is implemented in pure Elisp. I wrote a few introduction guides to Emacs and its ecosystem: http://tuhdo.github.io/ http://tuhdo.github.io/ . The guides do not include evil-mode though, as I use Emacs key bindings. But installing evil-mode is easy, and you can immediately use Vim key bindings for editing.

MarcScott 12y ago

Just checked and it's now available to brew

jsilence 12y ago

For distraction free writing, M-x toggle-frame-fullscreen and (set-fringe-mode '(120 . 120)). There used to be a bug in earlier emacs Versions requiring a Patch for proper fullscreen. Have not tried this for a while, but now it seems to work nice and smooth.

throwaway20148 12y ago
I like writeroom-mode[1] for distraction free writing. I only use emacs in a terminal that's always fullscreen, but I imagine it works just fine in any case. https://github.com/joostkremers/writeroom-mode https://github.com/joostkremers/writeroom-mode

imakesnowflakes 12y ago

Can some one tell me why windows Emacs still does not have a working shell? One cannot easily run ssh from a shell in windows emacs. I have found that I cannot push to a bitbucket repo that uses http authentication too from the shell. But if I run them from a cmd window, these works fine. What is the technical issue that is preventing emacs from fixing this?

throwaway20148 12y ago
I don't use windows, but recently read over this thread on /r/emacs with casual interest. Maybe it will help? http://www.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/2jjf2f/i_just_got_ssh_working_with_emacs_in_windows_with/ http://www.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/2jjf2f/i_just_got_ssh...
- imakesnowflakes 12y ago
  That is me! That is why I said 'One cannot easily run ssh..'. There are work arounds, like using plink or cygwin emacs and more. But it seems that every one of them is broken in some aspect. For eg, If I use cygwin, the cygwin file paths send to other command line programs (non cygwin) wont work with them. When using plink, the display of escape sequences in the command prompt, like "^[]0;vagrant@ubuntu-14:", and difficulty in working with programs like vagrant that uses ssh indirectly. And as far as I saw, none of them provides a working auto completion in the context of remote file system. Another thing is that I cannot push to a remote repo using http authentication.
  - throwaway20148 12y ago
    Haha, wow. I didn't put the usernames together. Good luck and I hope you figure out a solution!
cbsmith 12y ago
> What is the technical issue that is preventing emacs from fixing this? 1) Windows employs a very different model for console IO and shells in general. It's a job to do it right. 2) You haven't contributed a solution yet.

b3b0p 12y ago

If one wants to start using Emacs is there a recommended starter package that is recommended over others instead of starting from scratch that can be learned from over time? I want to start using Emacs, but starting with a blank slate leaves much to be desired. Especially when a someone new to Emacs doesn't know what's available or what can be done or how.

mordocai 12y ago
There are a few. I personally started off of a co-workers emacs.d instead, so I can't tell you which one I like. Here is a list of some of the popular ones: http://ergoemacs.org/misc/list_of_emacs_starter_kits.html http://ergoemacs.org/misc/list_of_emacs_starter_kits.html. Here is some discussion about how scary starter kits can be too, and some advice on learning emacs: http://www.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/1udtd1/starting_emacs_with_preludestarter_kits_scares_me/ http://www.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/1udtd1/starting_emacs....
chrisdone 12y ago
I think if you're the kind of user who just wants an editor that does things for you, you'd be better off sticking with what you have already chosen that satisfies your list of features. Deciding to use Emacs for its features is a bad reason. If you're interested in Emacs for its extensibility then I would consider it a worthy investment. Go through the tutorial, find out how to query docs, extend keybindings and modes and things like that, and then I would recommend my Elisp programming guide: https://github.com/chrisdone/elisp-guide https://github.com/chrisdone/elisp-guide