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EMACS - the Extensible Machine Aggregating Creative S-Expressions.

/simponic/emacs-presentation/media/branch/main/img/xkcd.png

what is emacs?

well… whatever it is, it's better than valve's Steam!

what?

yes, emacs is a gaming platform

some tetris?

comes with emacs.

  (tetris)

or bubbles?

comes with emacs.

  (bubbles)

or the game of life?

believe it or not, comes with emacs.

  (life)

why have a web browser when you can have emacs? 

  (eww "https://print.linux.usu.edu")

or an init system when you can have emacs?

https://github.com/a-schaefers/systemE

or a window manager when you can have emacs?

https://github.com/ch11ng/exwm

or a therapist when you can have emacs?

emacs can help you solve all your life's issues. literally.

  (doctor)

or a trongleposting server… in anything but emacs?

that's right. a RESTful API, websocket server, and static file HTTP server. in ELisp. in Emacs.

does this not blow your mind??

  (use-package web-server
    :ensure t
    :straight '(web-server
      	      :type git
      	      :host github
      	      :repo "eschulte/emacs-web-server"))

  (defvar *trongle-chats* (make-ring 100)) ;; "db"
  (defvar *static* "/home/lizzy/git/usufslc/emacs/trongleposting-client/build/") ;; npm run build
  (defvar *chatlog* "/home/lizzy/git/usufslc/emacs/log/emacs-presie.txt")

  (defvar *index* (concat *static* "index.html"))
  (defvar *port* 9000)
  (defvar *safe-chars* "^[ A-Za-z0-9._~()'!*:@,;+?-]+$")
  (defvar *clients* '())

  (defun current-iso-time ()
    (format-time-string "%FT%T%:z"))

  (defun safe-string-p (s &optional regex)
    (unless regex (setq regex *safe-chars*))
    (if (null s)
        nil
      (not (null (string-match regex s)))))

  (defun validate-chat (chat)
    (seq-every-p
     'safe-string-p
     (mapcar (lambda (field)
  	     (cdr (assoc field chat)))
  	   '(author message))))

  (defun deflate-chat (chat)
    (let ((parsed-j (json-parse-string chat)))
      `((author . ,(gethash "author" parsed-j))
        (message . ,(gethash "message" parsed-j)))))

  (defun inflate-chat (chat)
    (json-serialize chat))

  (defun inflate-chat-list (chats)
    (json-serialize
     (vconcat [] chats)))

  (defun remove-client (process event)
    (setq *clients* (seq-filter
  		   (lambda (proc)
  		     (not (equal process proc)))
  		   ,*clients*)))

  (defun handle-ws (proc input)
    (setq *clients* (cons proc *clients*))
    (set-process-sentinel proc 'remove-client)
    (process-send-string proc (ws-web-socket-frame "pong")))

  (defun new-post (request)
    (with-slots (process headers) request
      (let* ((body (ws-body request))
  	   (chat (deflate-chat body)))
        (if (validate-chat chat)
  	  (let* ((chat (cons `(date . ,(current-iso-time)) chat))
  		 (chat-json (inflate-chat chat)))
  	    ;; store and log
  	    (ring-insert *trongle-chats* chat)
  	    (append-to-file (concat chat-json "\n") nil *chatlog*)

  	    ;; propogate to open clients
  	    (mapcar (lambda (client)
  		      (process-send-string
  		       client
  		       (ws-web-socket-frame (inflate-chat chat))))
  		    ,*clients*)

  	    (ws-response-header process 200 '("Content-Type" . "application/json"))
      	    (process-send-string process (json-serialize '((success . t)))))
  	(ws-response-header process 400 '("Content-Type" . "application/json"))
      	(process-send-string process (json-serialize
  				      '((error . "invalid chat")
  					(success . :false))))))))

  (defun list-posts (request)
    (with-slots (process headers) request
      (ws-response-header process 200 '("Content-Type" . "application/json"))
      (process-send-string process
  			 (inflate-chat-list
  			  (reverse (ring-elements *trongle-chats*))))))

  (defun retrieve-static-file (request)
    (with-slots (process headers) request
      (let* ((path (replace-regexp-in-string "^/" "" (cdr (assoc :GET headers)))))
        (if (equal path "")
  	  (ws-send-file process *index*)
  	(if (ws-in-directory-p *static* path)
  	    (if (file-directory-p path)
     		(ws-send-404 process)
  	      (ws-send-file process
  			    (expand-file-name path *static*)))
  	  (ws-send-404 process))))))
  (ws-start
   `(((:POST . "/posts") . new-post)
     ((:GET . "/posts") . list-posts)
     ((:GET . ".*") .
      (lambda (request)
        (if (ws-web-socket-connect request 'handle-ws)
  	  :keep-alive
  	(retrieve-static-file request)))))
   ,*port*)

EEE-macs

i've come up with "Three E's" that kind of cover emacs' design tenets and goals:

1. be Extensible

this is the first and foremost goal of emacs, and one that should certainly be demonstrated by the above demos.

the only limit is your creativity. and with a fully bytecode JIT compilable LISP, that creativity is (don't quote me) Easy to Express.

2. be Evolving

like many other softwares, emacs is a living and breathing creature that is continuously growing.

the emacs community aims to make emacs the provider of an experience at the bleeding edge of writing software. major releases often bring about huge features that "evolve" emacs:

  1. native lsp support (tree-sitter, eglot in 29 - 2023)
  2. elisp JIT compiler to emacs bytecode (28.1 - 2022)
  3. pixel precise scrolling (long awaited)

(there's a joke here about emacs still being single threaded somewhere…)

3. be Easy as possible

while emacs may not adhere to the unix philosophy, it is easy to grok by anyone that has used a text editor before.

even with no experience, today you could simply drop into emacs test.c and begin writing text. there's no weird "action modes" that require a barrier of entry to write code - besides knowing the key combination to save and quit, and how to press arrow keys. there's no necessary emacstutor.

people even create specific "distributions" of emacs like linux itself to provide a simple interface for beginners to even further lower the mean delta time to become dangerous.

at the same time, emacs is more rich in features than any other software due to its extensibility. the further you go, the easier it gets. emacs is self documenting in itself (i.e. describe-*) and has great online docs too.

so what does the FSF say?

" Emacs is "an extensible, customizable, free/libre text editor — and more. At its core is an interpreter for Emacs Lisp, a dialect of the Lisp programming language with extensions to support text editing. "

hopefully this is starting to make sense…

final answer

so to answer the question, "what is emacs?"…

  1. it's a text editor
  2. it's a window manager
  3. it's a rich email client
  4. it's a native IDE for ELISP, with optional support for all other languages
  5. it's a web browser
  6. it's a gaming console
  7. it's an interpreter
  8. it's a document editor (more on this later)
  9. it's the love of my life (… what)
  10. <insert your thing here>

…maybe it's best to ask, "what is it not?".

and the answer to that, dear reader, is that emacs is not a good text editor :)

ORG mode

you may've noticed i have these little guys here in my presentation:

  (princ "I run in a source block!")

these are source blocks! blocks of code that can be run interactively in an "org" file; like a jupyter notebook.

org is by far my most used environment in emacs, outside of editing code. but what's an "org" file?

well, like the question "what is emacs?" itself, it's another very complicated answer.

"org" is a…

  1. presentation software (what you see here)
  2. calendar
  3. latex editor
  4. markdown editor
  5. html editor
  6. obsidian alternative
  7. open office editor
  8. programming notebook
  9. …

"your life, in plain text"

every single org file is simply plain text. that's the elegancy. thus, any way there is to structure code, can also be applied to org files.

as such, it's common for emacs users to define their init.el (the bootstrap config script run when emacs starts) in an org mode document, whose source-blocks are "compiled" into an init.el file. then one can add notes to one's code, organizing it into separate "trees" of concerns.

and certainly org is "your life" - org-roam is a whole second extensible brain.

students, this is for you

emacs is godly for math and cs students. between this "interactive notebook" and latex editor, you can write stuff without the overhead of LaTeX.

introducing a function f: S = { students at USU } M = { members of FSLC } B = { cool, uncool } f : S → B ∋ f(x) = { cool (x ∈ M), uncool } definition of a proper subset: A ⊂ B ⇔ ∀ x (x ∈ A ⇒ x ∈ B) ∧ A ≠ B

right now, it doesn't look pretty, but watch this:

  (org-toggle-pretty-entities)

with the built-in emacs pdf viewer it's also easy to completely export a document to latex and view its compilation. perfect for assignments!

buffers, windows, frames, oh my

to get you in the world of emacs, i should at least introduce the very basics.

  • frames are the "top level instance" of emacs. they're the actual "window" controlled by your window manager or terminal emulator in the instance of a tui; you can drag it around and such.
  • buffers are interfaces between your emacs client and a file (or process). it's what controls the individual text on the screen.
  • windows simply hold buffers; think of a "glass window" into a buffer. i.e. i can create a new window split in my frame
  (split-window-below)

i now have two windows, "viewing" the buffer representing the org file of this presentation.

modes

" A mode is a set of definitions that customize Emacs behavior in useful ways.

There are two varieties of modes: minor modes, which provide features that users can turn on and off while editing; and major modes, which are used for editing or interacting with a particular kind of text. " - https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/elisp/Modes.html

by example, "ORG MODE", a major mode, tells emacs how to format the buffer to a window and draw all the neat little symbols and indentation.

by contrast format-all-mode is a minor mode that might look at the major mode (maybe LISP mode, or C mode) and determines a formatter to auto-format a buffer's file on save.

key bindings

there's a reason it's called "emacs pinky"

/simponic/emacs-presentation/media/branch/main/img/emacs_user_fingers.png

anyways, you should absolutely know:

  • "C-x C-s" (ctrl-x ctrl-s) to save a file
  • "C-x C-c" (ctrl-x ctrl-c) to quit an emacs frame
  • "C-g" (ctrl-g) to cancel something (in most cases) if you fuck up
  • "C-x u" (ctrl-x u) to undo
  • "M-x butterfly" (meta / alt - x) "butterfly"

getting started

you don't really every need to get good in ELISP to use emacs, despite what you may've been lead to believe in this presentation.

all you need is the help screen. when you open emacs without a file specified, this is what you're greeted with.

so is emacs better than vim?

let's see what trongle has to say 

 ____________________________________________________ 
/                                                    \
|  i'm gonna start using emacs to write my rust      |
 ---------------------------------------------------- 
          \\         :::.
           \\      .::::::
            \\    :::::::::
             \\ .:::::::;od8888bo.
               ::::::::OP?'::`*YO?
             .:::::::::::::::::.
           ,od8888bo;::::::d88b::
           *":d88b:"*::::::Y88D:::
          .:::Y88D::::::::::YP:::::.
         ::::::YP::::::::::::::::::::
        ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::.     .oo.
      .:::::::::::::::::::::oOOb:::::::.  ,oOOOD
     ::::::::::::d8b:::::::::*OOO::::::;oOOOOP"
    ::::::::::::::`*Y88888P:::OOOb:::;dOOOP"
  .::::::::::::::::::::::::::;OOOD:/dOOOOo::
 .::::::::::::::::::::::::::;OOOOOOOOOOOOO*::
.:::::::::::::::::::::::::::oOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD::.
`:::::::::::::::::::::::::::OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOB::'
                            *OOOOOOOOOOOOOOD
                             `*OOOOOOOOOOP"
                                `"OOOP*"

thank you trongle! very insightful.

in all seriousness

… well the answer is it doesn't matter. none is greater than the other.

hahahah!! just kidding! yes, of course emacs is better than vim.

can't decide? be EVIL

/simponic/emacs-presentation/media/branch/main/img/yay_evil.png

if you want to be EVIL and "emulate" vim in emacs, there's EVIL mode.

EVIL mode aims to be near 100% compatible with all things vim. Doom Emacs and Spacemacs are somewhat sane distributions of Emacs meant for recent converts to the Church of Emacs that may know a thing or two about ViM bindings.

and… a recent convert to being EVIL… take it away, Ethan!