path: root/2021/captions/emacsconf-2021-dev-update--emacs-development-updates--john-wiegley--main.vtt

WEBVTT

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Hello, my name is John Wiegley.

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I'm a past co-maintainer of Emacs.

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Nowadays, all of the work

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and mailing list traffic

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is handled by Eli Zaretskii

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and Lars Ingebrigtsen.

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I just wanted to give you an update

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of what has been happening

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and what is soon to come

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in Emacs development.

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So I spoke to Eli

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and he gave me the lowdown

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on Emacs 28, which is the next

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big release to come up yet.

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He says that we hope to

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release this soon.

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Pre-testing has not yet started,

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but maybe looking at

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the first quarter of next year.

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The biggest feature coming in Emacs 28

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is going to be native compilation,

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and this will make some Emacs code

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two to four times as fast,

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depending on what kind of Lisp

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you're running

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and how much of your Lisp code

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is just Lisp,

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or makes calls to primitive functions.

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There were previous JIT attempts.

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Some of them still live on

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in development branches,

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but they were found

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to not speed things up too much.

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The version coming in Emacs 28

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has much better results

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than these past attempts,

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but it should be noted

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that it has some side effects.

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One is that natively-compiled files

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are going to be system-dependent,

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so they can't be included

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in any distributions

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the way we do now with .elc files,

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since those run on any platform.

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This means that you will need to

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compile those files

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for your own machine, sometimes,

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depending on how

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the compilation process goes.

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It could vary by processor.

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And it requires you also

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to have the right

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compilation environment.

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This means that you may need tools

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from the gcc tool chain

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that aren't installed

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as part of the default,

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so you will maybe have to do some work

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to set up the right

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compilation environment

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for your platform.

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Natively-compiled files

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are also kept in a separate directory.

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There are some issues

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having to do with recompilation too,

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so there are certain changes which,

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if made to the Emacs source code

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between releases,

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may require you to recompile

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all of the natively-compiled files

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that you had compiled previously.

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Also, the file names of compiled files

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that get installed

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have hashes on them

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depending on the Emacs

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that they were built against,

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so Emacs should be able to detect

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when recompilation is necessary,

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but it may be difficult

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for distributions who want to know

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what all of the build files

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are going to be in advance

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in order to prepare

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a binary distribution

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for that for that platform.

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So these are all little wrinkles

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that we're going to discover

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and have to work out

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as this functionality comes out

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and starts getting used

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in lots of different distributions.

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Another feature is that Cairo is

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now being built with by default,

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and this is one step further toward

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better support for emojis.

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If you build with Cairo,

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you will get all of the emoji sequences

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defined by the latest Unicode,

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and in full color,

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the exact same as on your smartphone ,

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and it works on macOS as well.

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There's a new mode,

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but it is off by default,

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called context-menus mode,

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and this gives menus that appear

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when you right-click

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somewhere in a buffer,

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but now will make it easier

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for other modes to define

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what those context menus

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should look like,

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so that's sort of making that support...

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having it less custom

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in each module that implements

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that type of behavior.

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They can now do it through this context

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and then use the facility.

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Tab-bar and tab-line have received

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many enhancements.

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So there's new commands, new variables,

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there's quite a large number of changes,

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so if you like those modes,

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if you use them,

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then you should be happy

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with what's coming.

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There is a command...

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Now, a command can be marked

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as being specific to a mode,

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so that if you're not in that mode,

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then, when you press M-x,

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it won't appear

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in the tab completion list.

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Right now, M-x is a full population

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of every interactive command

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known to Emacs,

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but in many cases,

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unless you're in a text-mode buffer

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or a latex-mode buffer,

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or some programming language mode buffer,

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a lot of the commands

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that might be presented to you today

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are irrelevant to that buffer

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that you're in. So commands can now

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specify in their interactive declaration

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which mode they're specific to,

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and in that case, they will only appear

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in the completion list for that mode.

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In fact, only be available

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in that mode to execute.

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There are going to be

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transient input methods,

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and what this means is that right now,

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with Emacs, you can hit a key sequence

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to change your input method

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to, say, latin1 or to Arabic or Hebrew

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or some other language,

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so that you can start entering text

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using that input mode,

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but transient input methods

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will allow you

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to switch to an input mode temporarily.

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So if you're mostly writing

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in English text, but you want to insert

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one Greek letter, you don't have to

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switch to an input mode

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that has Latin and Greek letters.

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You can just switch over

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to a Greek input mode,

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momentarily enter in the Greek letter,

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and then come back

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to your default input method.

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show-paren-mode will be enabled

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by default in Emacs 28,

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so that's the highlighting of parens

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whenever your cursor is on or near

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a closing paren or an opening paren,

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for example.

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We're also going to have a NonGNU ELPA,

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so there will be a ELPA repository

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just like the ELPA we have today,

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except it will have packages in it

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that have not gone through

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the same level of

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copyright assignment requirements

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as the GNU ELPA.

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So NonGNU ELPA will make it easier

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for packages to get into a repository

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that is managed by the package.el

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that ships with Emacs.

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There's going to be a repeat-mode

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added to Emacs 28, repeat-mode.el.

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What this does is when you turn it on,

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when you enable repeat-mode,

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then certain commands

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which are executed by keybindings

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like C-x u for undo

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will allow you to just

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keep hitting that u, that final letter

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you used for the command

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to keep repeating that function.

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This works today already

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for things like macro repetition, C-x e,

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where you can just keep hitting e

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to repeat the macro

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as many times as you like,

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but that was a custom feature

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just for macros.

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This makes repeat mode accessible to

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most commands.

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The project.el package

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has dozens of new commands,

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so check the documentation there

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to find out what's going to be new

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in project.el.

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And there will be shorthands

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for Lisp symbols

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supported in the Lisp symbol reader.

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This means that for packages

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like s and f that have a whole bunch

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of really short named functions

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that might pollute the namespace,

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those functions now can be

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implemented behind a prefix

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where the symbol reader can be taught

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that there is a shorthand

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for that prefix,

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and that way, it'll only apply

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for the use of that package.

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And then finally, work on Emacs 29

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has just started.

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I don't have any details

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to report to you there,

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just to say that now

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the ship is moving on

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to the next release after,

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and Emacs 28 has a release branch

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and is getting cleaned up

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and ready for release.

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And that is the technical summary

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of what's new in Emacs.

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Thank you.