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# 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"]]
[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".
<!-- from the pad --->
- Actual start and end time (EST): Start 2020-11-28T11.45.20 (~45min talk); 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: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOAqBc42Gg8#t=32m05s>
## 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: <http://angg.twu.net/emacsconf2020.html> - 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: <https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/EevMode> | <http://angg.twu.net/#eev>
- 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 <https://emacsconf.org/2019/talks/27/>
- Anchors (not explained in the talk) <http://angg.twu.net/eev-intros/find-eev-quick-intro.html#8>
- <http://angg.twu.net/emacsconf2020.html>
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