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!