WEBVTT
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I'm Sacha Chua, and here are
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ten Emacs News highlights for 2021.
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If you want to follow the links,
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check out the wiki page at
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https://emacsconf.org/2021/talks/news/ .
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1. The Emacs developers are currently
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working on Emacs 28.1,
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which will be the next major release.
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Native compilation should
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make everything way faster,
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and emoji support will probably
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make things more fun. 😎👍
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John Wiegley will share more Emacs 28 details
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in his update, so check out his talk.
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Andrea Corallo's giving a talk
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on native compilation too.
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2.
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Org mode is now at version 9.5.
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New features include
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a library for managing citations,
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asynchronous session support
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for code blocks,
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and better control
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of your agenda's appearance.
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If you've been getting your Org packages
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from Org ELPA,
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you can update your configuration
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to get Org from GNU ELPA
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and org-contrib from NonGNU ELPA.
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The new release of the Org Roam package
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should be a faster and more consistent way
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to use Org to manage a knowledgebase,
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and org-roam-ui looks pretty snazzy.
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The best way to keep up with Org changes
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is to check out the blog This Month in Org.
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3.
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New Magit major release!
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Jonas Bernoulli has split some functionality
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into other packages so that
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Emacs Lisp developers can use them, such as
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magit-section, transient, and forge.
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Here's an example of using magit-section
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to manage groups of buffers.
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You can learn more about Transient
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in the talk on self-describing
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smart domain-specific languages or DSLs.
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4.
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In terms of smaller packages, there's been
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a lot of activity around completion.
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Karthik has a great diagram,
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and Prot explains how things work together.
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I think the idea is that instead of having
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one large completion system
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like Helm or Icicles, you can choose
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a few different, smaller packages
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and configure them to work together.
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If you're curious about this,
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you might start with either selectrum
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or vertico, which are both completion interfaces,
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add marginalia for more information,
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and try consult for many useful
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completing commands.
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There are so many options,
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so it might be useful to check out
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some discussions.
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5.
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Embark is usually mentioned as part of
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that group of packages,
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but it's well worth looking into
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even if you use a different system.
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Embark lets you have context-sensitive shortcuts
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that work on things in buffers, minibuffers,
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and even collections of things.
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You can also use it
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when you start doing one command
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and then decide to do a different one instead.
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For more ideas, check out
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Fifteen Ways to Use Embark.
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6.
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Now that there are Emacs Lisp bindings
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for tree-sitter, we can work more easily
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with the structure of code instead of
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just using regular expressions.
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Check out the talk
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on Tree-edit and structural editing
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to learn more.
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You can use tree-sitter for
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intelligent snippets that get information
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from the code around them,
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editing Lisp expressions,
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and navigating text objects in Evil mode.
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(That's when Emacs is pretending to be Vi.)
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Dynamic modules help us add more to Emacs
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than Emacs Lisp easily offers,
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such as structural editing in OCaml
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and using Rust to figure out parentheses
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and indentation for Lisp.
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If you're curious,
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check out the talk on
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Extending Emacs in Rust with Dynamic Modules.
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7.
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Collaborative editing is now much easier
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since the CRDT package is in GNU ELPA.
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It allows multiple people to edit
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the same file over the network,
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using their own Emacs.
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This means you can keep your own config
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and keybindings, yay!
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Watch the Emacs Research Group talk
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for an example of how several people
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used it to work together.
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8.
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In case you're still under the impression
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that Emacs is just a text editor,
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some folks have been working on
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pretty neat graphical experiments.
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These OpenGL bindings for Emacs Lisp
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use an embedded xwidget,
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while other prototypes use the SVG support
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that's built into Emacs
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for Gantt charts,
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scribbles,
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and even diagrams.
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The color-picker from that one
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looks particularly useful for CSS.
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If you want to play around with adding SVGs
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to your files and interfaces,
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svg-icon
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and svg-lib
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might be good places to start. (Reddit)
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Of course, there's always a place
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for ASCII art,
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especially with the new boxy package
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that you can use for org files,
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imenu navigation,
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and even things in real life.
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9.
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There have been a lot of great posts, videos,
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and livestreams about Emacs this year.
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In addition to the ones
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from System Crafters,
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Emacs Elements,
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and Protesilaos,
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John Kitchin
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and Mike Zamansky
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are back, hooray!
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And Marcin Borkowski has just finished
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writing an intermediate textbook
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Emacs Lisp, too!
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10.
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Lastly, if you want to chat
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with other Emacs folks
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and get help on Emacs, Org mode,
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or other topics,
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the #emacs and #org-mode
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Internet Relay Chat or IRC channels
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are now on the libera.chat network
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instead of Freenode.
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If you'd like to add something I've missed,
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please add them to the wiki page,
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or e-mail me at sacha@sachachua.com .
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That's all for this quick review.
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Enjoy the rest of EmacsConf 2021!
