# On why most of the best features in eev look like 5-minute hacks Eduardo Ochs [[!template id=vid src="https://mirror.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/emacsconf/2020/emacsconf-2020--21-on-why-most-of-the-best-features-in-eev-look-like-5-minute-hacks--eduardo-ochs.webm" subtitles="/2020/subtitles/emacsconf-2020--21-on-why-most-of-the-best-features-in-eev-look-like-5-minute-hacks--eduardo-ochs.vtt"]] [Download compressed .webm video (43.9M)](https://mirror.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/emacsconf/2020/smaller/emacsconf-2020--21-on-why-most-of-the-best-features-in-eev-look-like-5-minute-hacks--eduardo-ochs--vp9-q56-video-original-audio.webm) In the last months there were several hundreds of messages in emacs-devel in threads with names like "A proposal for a friendlier Emacs", "How to make Emacs popular again", and "Interactive guide for new users". On the one hand I am absolutely sure that eev is very good answer to all these themes; on the other hand I know that eev is based on some design decisions that offend most people used to modern, "user-friendly" interfaces - and I feel that at this moment mentions to eev in those discussions in emacs-devel would not be welcome. In this talk I will start by presenting very quickly the main "killer features" of eev - namely: 1. Elisp hyperlinks, 2. interactive tutorials that can be navigated with just three keys, 3. non-invasiveness - people can easily turn eev on for only five minutes each week, play with it a bit, and then turn it off, 4. high discoverability factor, 5. a way to create "hyperlinks to here", 6. hyperlinks to specific points in PDF documents and video files - i.e., to specific pages, strings, and timemarks, 7. a way to control shell-like programs ("eepitch"), and 8. an Elisp tutorial, and after that I will present the design decisions behind eev, in two parts: 1. eev is a very thin layer above Emacs-the-Lisp-environment; it is as simple as possible, but in the sense of "simple" that was used in Forth, and that is not very familiar today. 2. Very often when I am using Emacs - which is my main interface with the system - I realize that I can automate some task that I just did by hand twice of thrice; and that I should do that, because automating that would be both easy and fun. Over the years I experimented with several ways of automating tasks, refined some of these ways a lot, and found a certain "best" style that, again, usually offends people who are accustomed with the modern ideas of user-friendliness. In this style, used in most template-based functions in eev, both textual documentation and error-handling are kept to a minimum. I will show how, and why, eev makes this style works so well, and how users can create their own templated functions very quickly - as "5-minute hacks". - Actual start and end time (EST): Start: 2020-11-28T11.45.20; End: 2020-11-28T12.26.00 # Questions ## Is eev like GNU hyperbole? (from karthink in #emacsconf) [rswgnu] I know Eduardo is exploring using Hyperbole with eev and we will work with him to help him integrate its features. ## Are there variants of pos-spec-list that aren't search based? E.g., find buffer + run some other command + copy results? I guess this is partly answered, with Xpdf example. Take a look here: ## I didn't quite follow the find-here-links demo, can you describe that once more slowly? I just added links to the tutorials about find-here-links and refining hyperlinks to the bottom of this page: - hope that helps! ## What are the books/readings that inspired you about usability again? Here are some: "Software Tools" by Kernighan and Plauger, the article about "Little Languages" in Jon Bentley's "More Programming Pearls", a commercial Forth called HS-Forth, and "Exploring Expect" by Don Libes. # Notes - eev homepage: | . - find-video open a video with a time stamp as an input argument. - How to record executable notes with eev - and how to play them back . - Anchors (not explained in the talk) . -