WEBVTT
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Okay, so we are live now. So hi, everyone. Sorry, we were doing some last minute verification
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with Blaine. We wanted to share screens, but somehow the Firefox gods are not in our favor
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today. So hi, Blaine. How are you doing?
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I'm doing great, Will. This has been a great conference. I've seen some talks this morning
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that are going to change my life. I just can't wait to start applying some of the packages
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I've learned about.
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That's amazing. And it's only day one. We've got more of this coming today, too.
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Exactly.
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So, Blaine, we haven't had the chance to tell you, but do you have the pad open on
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your end?
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Let's see.
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Oh, yes, because I asked you to close Firefox, so you don't have it. Do you need the URL,
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maybe?
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Yeah, that would be great.
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I will put it into BBB, the chat right on your left.
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Okay. I see it. So if I click on this and open a new window?
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Yes, don't worry about it.
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Okay. So I have some questions. Oh, that's fantastic. This is kind of a silly question,
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but I'm curious. Do you have a favorite color theme?
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So I do. I've been using a color theme that is sort of light green. It's from a set of
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themes that Prot put together and made available this fall on Melpa, and in some of the slides
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you'll see that I have this, like, white background, but I'm currently using a sort of a mint green
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color, which I find actually has great contrast, and I had to install some fonts for the Mac
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to be able to use that theme, but Prot provides detailed instructions, and it was pretty easy
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to do.
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Okay. Let's see. To your knowledge, so the second question is, to your knowledge, are
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recent coming security changes in Chrome going to impact browser extension?
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Oh, that's a great question. I, to be honest, I don't know. I'm not aware of that issue
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because I ran and I installed some extension I probably shouldn't have installed in Chrome
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a couple weeks ago, and I've been getting pop-up ads, and so I switched to Firefox,
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but so far I have used GhostText in a number of browsers. I can vouch that it works in
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Safari, Chrome, obviously Firefox, Brave, and then amongst the Firefox family of browsers
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there's WaterFox and IceCat. It works in those two.
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So if Chrome's security issues become a problem, then there are other browsers for which maybe
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that problem won't be an issue.
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Is this, a third question is, is this browser, is this browser agnostic, or do you have to
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use Chrome?
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That's a good question. So obviously, as you've seen that, or just heard, it works in a number
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of other browsers. There's probably at least ten other browsers in which it will work.
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So there's sort of three families of extensions, one for Safari, one for Firefox, and one for
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Chrome, and often one of those extensions will work in a different browser.
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You mentioned, fourth question is, you mentioned a couple other solutions to allow Emacs editing
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of text areas, pointers. Well, unfortunately, I didn't do my due diligence in researching
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those other solutions. I'm aware that there's something called Emacs Everywhere that's supposed
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to have a similar capability, but I haven't dug into using it, so I can't say anything
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about it.
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I'll have to say that. So because you're setting up a server from an editor, and you have this
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extension in a browser, things don't always mesh. You may have port 4001 occupied by some
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other server from Emacs or another application, and so you have to sort that out. That can
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happen from time to time. I've had trouble with the Emacs server sometimes using that
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port, but I think you can redirect that Emacs server to another port to avoid that issue.
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That would be the greatest difficulty is just getting the two sides talking to each other
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through the web socket, but once that's going, I use it every day, and I'll go for weeks
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without any issue, and then, of course, I'll be changing something about Emacs configuration
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where I'm turning on some new server that fires up when I start Emacs, and then I break
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it there, or something along those lines, but the great hazard of fiddling with your
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Emacs configuration, just a hazard of being an Emacs user. Let's see. Why not save text?
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So I have a fifth question, which is why not save text from Emacs? I would like to hear
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some solution to the issue I ran into. So if I am editing a document in a web browser
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and then via Emacs, and I save that to a document on disk, then I, okay, that's great if I'm
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not going to make any more changes, everything's fine, that works great, but if I then decide
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to make more changes in the browser, and then I try to save those changes, the copy on disk
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is out of sync with the copy in the browser, and I've had the connection break when I do
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that. So I heard that there might be a way of solving that problem. I'm not, but I have
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not implemented the solution. I forget what the suggestion was. Maybe somebody in the
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audience has an idea.
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Speaking of the audience, we have opened up the chat now, so if you want to join the current
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BBB Discord room in which we are and ask questions directly to Blaine, feel free to do so, otherwise
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we're still taking questions on the pad as long as we have them, although right now I
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think we have answered all of them. Am I wrong, Blaine, or did we answer all of them already?
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You're correct, we've answered all of them.
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So we're going to still discuss for about 2-3 minutes. If people want to add last questions
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to the pad, feel free to do so. If you want to join us in BBB, the link is at the top
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of the talk of Blaine, Euclid Maxco 2022. You know everything now. We are at the end
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of the day, and you can tell it's the end of the day because my accent is getting significantly
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Frencher as a result. It's not getting any better since last year, I think. I wish I
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could contribute, Blaine, more to your talk, but I feel like I'm way out of my league.
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I'm the guy who plays with Org on the side, and I tune into your talks every year, and
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I see molecules, and I see stuff that I can barely comprehend, and I feel very humbled
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as a result.
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Well, I'm just trying to make my talks kind of unique.
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You are succeeding amazingly well. It reminds me, have you been talking with John Kinchin
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or something? Because you seem to be evolving in seminal fields, in a way, with Emacs.
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I have been. I'm a fan of his. I have installed CyMax and his configuration for Emacs, but
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I haven't. I've just started poking around with it, and I've used his configuration.
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I've got it up and running, and I've used GhostText with it, and I was trying to tap
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into his OrgRef package, which is super powerful for managing bibliographies.
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Yeah.
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Yeah, he's very inspiring.
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I'm glad to hear you're very much inspired. Go on, please.
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He's very amazing. He's very accomplished in Emacs and a very accomplished teacher,
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and he has now, as you probably know, a series of videos on YouTube that he's been putting
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together about programming. So he's teaching students at Carnegie Mellon University how
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to program in Python via Emacs, and he has been sharing these videos on YouTube, and
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they're like just 20-minute videos, kind of short snippets, but you can learn a lot from
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them. It's really fantastic.
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It's an amazing journey, isn't it? You start from a field that has nothing to do whatsoever
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with Emacs, and yet you find yourself so attracted to the idea of programming and making your
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workflow easier that you end up actually transitioning into a little bit of a programming role or
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teaching programming role. I mean, I was studying literature. I was all well and good in my
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English faculty, and then I decided to say, oh yeah, let's try Emacs, and 10 years later
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I find myself spending more time working on Emacs than working on my literature papers.
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My history is that I developed a dozen years ago, started teaching students how to do molecular
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graphics, and then I got into Python programming to develop tools to make it easier for them
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to use molecular graphics, and then evolved into making these snippets available for a
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wide range of text editors that meant learning about – so I prepared these snippets for
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about 20 different text editors, leading ones, and of course I saved for the end Emacs. First
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I went through Vim and the month of hell of rewiring your brain to do the Vim key bindings
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and then on to Emacs, which I call the ultimate text editor, because there is no other text
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editor beyond Emacs. It's the end of the line.
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I absolve you for your herrings with Vim as a result of the last comment you just made.
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Actually, no, I have new write of that solution. I can agree to your solution. You'll have
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to ask RMS tomorrow.
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Well, I spent a year in evil mode, but I switched about half a year ago to just Emacs key bindings
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and bye-bye Vim. I use Vim when I log into remote servers and have to edit something
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really quick, but I've probably forgotten most of the key bindings. There's only about
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a dozen you really need to know to get the essential work done. But yeah, it's been
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quite a journey.
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Sorry for the interruption. We do have one question, a very simple question about what
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was the key binding for Linux Firefox. Do you have it on top of your mind?
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So Linux Firefox.
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I'm not sure what they're referring to as well, which is why I threw you this purple,
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hoping that it would make sense for you.
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It's Control-Shift-H.
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I hope this answers your questions. So I think Control-Shift-H, yes. Well Blaine, I see some
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people have joined on BBB, but no one with a microphone still. I will tide you at the
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end. We are reaching the end of the day. We are reaching closing remarks and I will be
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making a plea for more people to join with a microphone. Last year we had pretty much
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the same setting. We were opening the room afterwards and people were showing up with
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the microphones and we had lovely discussions. So in this year, it feels like everyone's
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a little shy, shouldn't you know? That's the whole point is for you to talk and for
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us all to listen. Well Blaine, that was very insightful. Thank you so much for both the
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presentation and the questions. Go on.
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We have a question in the panel on the left and blue button. So how long have I been using
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Emacs? I made a commitment to use it full-time about 18 months ago, maybe 20 months ago.
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So I'm a newbie. I'm still in the steep part of the learning curve.
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You just have to provide context for the people. Blaine presented something at the last year's
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EmacsConf and it was as impressive as this year's presentation. And afterwards he told
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us, oh yeah, I've been using Emacs for six months or so. And that's where everyone's
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jewels dropped to the floor because some people have been using Emacs for 10 years and we
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couldn't even imagine doing some of the stuff you're doing with it.
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Thank you.
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Do we have any other questions? I think that's pretty much it. I'm not seeing anything appear
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on the other screen. I think we're pretty much good. So Blaine, I'm not going to keep
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you any longer. We are probably going to bring this Q&A to a close. Thank you so much for
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all the answers. What are we going to do for the stream? We still have a talk going on
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on the dev channel currently. And then we'll be going to the closing remarks for the day
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at about 55 of the current hour. So we are going on a break for 20 to 25 minutes. So
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Blaine, sorry for keeping you off stage as I'm making the announcement, but it's the
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best way for people to see my face as I do it.
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Thank you very much, Leo. I appreciate it.
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And thank you so much for all your time and all your answers. I will be closing BBB now
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and we will put some music on and some announcements and see you at the top of the hour for the
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others or 55 rather than top of the hour. All right. Bye bye everyone. Bye bye Blaine.
