WEBVTT
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Hello, my name is John Wiegley.
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I'm a past co-maintainer of Emacs.
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Nowadays, all of the work
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and mailing list traffic
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is handled by Eli Zaretskii
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and Lars Ingebrigtsen.
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I just wanted to give you an update
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of what has been happening
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and what is soon to come
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in Emacs development.
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So I spoke to Eli
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and he gave me the lowdown
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on Emacs 28, which is the next
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big release to come up yet.
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He says that we hope to
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release this soon.
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Pre-testing has not yet started,
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but maybe looking at
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the first quarter of next year.
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The biggest feature coming in Emacs 28
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is going to be native compilation,
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and this will make some Emacs code
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two to four times as fast,
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depending on what kind of Lisp
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you're running
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and how much of your Lisp code
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is just Lisp,
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or makes calls to primitive functions.
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There were previous JIT attempts.
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Some of them still live on
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in development branches,
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but they were found
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to not speed things up too much.
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The version coming in Emacs 28
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has much better results
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than these past attempts,
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but it should be noted
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that it has some side effects.
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One is that natively-compiled files
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are going to be system-dependent,
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so they can't be included
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in any distributions
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the way we do now with .elc files,
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since those run on any platform.
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This means that you will need to
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compile those files
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for your own machine, sometimes,
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depending on how
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the compilation process goes.
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It could vary by processor.
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And it requires you also
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to have the right
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compilation environment.
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This means that you may need tools
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from the gcc tool chain
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that aren't installed
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as part of the default,
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so you will maybe have to do some work
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to set up the right
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compilation environment
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for your platform.
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Natively-compiled files
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are also kept in a separate directory.
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There are some issues
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having to do with recompilation too,
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so there are certain changes which,
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if made to the Emacs source code
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between releases,
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may require you to recompile
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all of the natively-compiled files
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that you had compiled previously.
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Also, the file names of compiled files
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that get installed
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have hashes on them
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depending on the Emacs
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that they were built against,
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so Emacs should be able to detect
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when recompilation is necessary,
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but it may be difficult
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for distributions who want to know
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what all of the build files
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are going to be in advance
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in order to prepare
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a binary distribution
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for that for that platform.
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So these are all little wrinkles
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that we're going to discover
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and have to work out
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as this functionality comes out
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and starts getting used
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in lots of different distributions.
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Another feature is that Cairo is
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now being built with by default,
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and this is one step further toward
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better support for emojis.
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If you build with Cairo,
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you will get all of the emoji sequences
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defined by the latest Unicode,
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and in full color,
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the exact same as on your smartphone ,
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and it works on macOS as well.
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There's a new mode,
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but it is off by default,
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called context-menus mode,
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and this gives menus that appear
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when you right-click
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somewhere in a buffer,
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but now will make it easier
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for other modes to define
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what those context menus
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should look like,
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so that's sort of making that support...
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having it less custom
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in each module that implements
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that type of behavior.
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They can now do it through this context
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and then use the facility.
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Tab-bar and tab-line have received
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many enhancements.
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So there's new commands, new variables,
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there's quite a large number of changes,
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so if you like those modes,
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if you use them,
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then you should be happy
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with what's coming.
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There is a command...
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Now, a command can be marked
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as being specific to a mode,
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so that if you're not in that mode,
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then, when you press M-x,
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it won't appear
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in the tab completion list.
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Right now, M-x is a full population
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of every interactive command
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known to Emacs,
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but in many cases,
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unless you're in a text-mode buffer
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or a latex-mode buffer,
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or some programming language mode buffer,
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a lot of the commands
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that might be presented to you today
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are irrelevant to that buffer
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that you're in. So commands can now
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specify in their interactive declaration
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which mode they're specific to,
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and in that case, they will only appear
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in the completion list for that mode.
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In fact, only be available
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in that mode to execute.
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There are going to be
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transient input methods,
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and what this means is that right now,
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with Emacs, you can hit a key sequence
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to change your input method
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to, say, latin1 or to Arabic or Hebrew
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or some other language,
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so that you can start entering text
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using that input mode,
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but transient input methods
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will allow you
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to switch to an input mode temporarily.
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So if you're mostly writing
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in English text, but you want to insert
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one Greek letter, you don't have to
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switch to an input mode
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that has Latin and Greek letters.
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You can just switch over
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to a Greek input mode,
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momentarily enter in the Greek letter,
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and then come back
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to your default input method.
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show-paren-mode will be enabled
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by default in Emacs 28,
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so that's the highlighting of parens
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whenever your cursor is on or near
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a closing paren or an opening paren,
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for example.
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We're also going to have a NonGNU ELPA,
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so there will be a ELPA repository
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just like the ELPA we have today,
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except it will have packages in it
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that have not gone through
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the same level of
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copyright assignment requirements
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as the GNU ELPA.
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So NonGNU ELPA will make it easier
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for packages to get into a repository
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that is managed by the package.el
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that ships with Emacs.
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There's going to be a repeat-mode
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added to Emacs 28, repeat-mode.el.
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What this does is when you turn it on,
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when you enable repeat-mode,
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then certain commands
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which are executed by keybindings
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like C-x u for undo
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will allow you to just
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keep hitting that u, that final letter
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you used for the command
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to keep repeating that function.
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This works today already
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for things like macro repetition, C-x e,
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where you can just keep hitting e
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to repeat the macro
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as many times as you like,
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but that was a custom feature
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just for macros.
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This makes repeat mode accessible to
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most commands.
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The project.el package
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has dozens of new commands,
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so check the documentation there
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to find out what's going to be new
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in project.el.
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And there will be shorthands
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for Lisp symbols
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supported in the Lisp symbol reader.
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This means that for packages
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like s and f that have a whole bunch
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of really short named functions
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that might pollute the namespace,
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those functions now can be
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implemented behind a prefix
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where the symbol reader can be taught
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that there is a shorthand
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for that prefix,
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and that way, it'll only apply
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for the use of that package.
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And then finally, work on Emacs 29
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has just started.
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I don't have any details
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to report to you there,
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just to say that now
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the ship is moving on
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to the next release after,
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and Emacs 28 has a release branch
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and is getting cleaned up
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and ready for release.
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And that is the technical summary
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of what's new in Emacs.
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Thank you.
