path: root/2023/captions/emacsconf-2023-nabokov--why-nabokov-would-use-orgmode-if-he-were-writing-today--edmund-jorgensen--answers.vtt

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[Speaker 0]: About 3

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seconds. And I believe we are live.

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Hi Edmund, how are you doing?

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[Speaker 1]: Hi, how's it going Leo?

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I'm doing well, thanks.

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Yourself?

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[Speaker 0]: I'm also doing well. So Edmund doesn't have

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his webcam on but he will be able to answer

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questions that you ask inside of the Azure

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pad that I've shared again on IRC.

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By the way, we only have 1 question and we

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have about 40 minutes of question time,

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so feel free to add as many questions as you

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want and in the meantime,

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we'll get started on the first 1.

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Unless, Edmond, do you have anything to say

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after your presentation?

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[Speaker 1]: No, we can jump in.

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[Speaker 0]: Okay, lovely. So first question,

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is the index, sorry, does the index really

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matter here? I mean his colleague is also

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using some A4 paper and you think that the

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index card is the most important thing here?

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[Speaker 1]: That's a great question.

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I mean, I think you can do anything with a

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larger piece of paper that you can do with a

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smaller piece of paper.

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But I actually encourage you to try this out.

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I did, not for research for this talk,

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but just when I read about Nabokov and his

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index cards to begin with,

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I kind of tried it out a little bit and wrote

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some shorter things on index cards and so on

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and there really is something about the size

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and the kind of ability to manipulate them.

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You really can bundle them and move them

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around easier and I think that that I think

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he enjoyed that. So sure I mean I think you

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can do anything with a4 paper that you could

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do with index cards but I think there's

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something about that form that lends itself

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to the especially to the reorganization maybe

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to the focus as well just because it's

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smaller but but definitely to the

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reorganization.

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[Speaker 0]: Definitely So we have a lot more questions

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now. So thank you, everyone,

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for answering my plea for more questions.

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Next question. How do you explore the second

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level headings, i.e. The scenes in this

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example, without the heading itself,

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just the content? Is that clear enough?

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[Speaker 1]: Great question. Yeah, so I've tried 2 ways,

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sorry, 3 ways with this and landed on 1 that

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I like. Originally I used the OX package.

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There's an OX ignore thing in there where you

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can add an ignore tag to where you don't want

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the headings, but you do want the content

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exported. I found that a little bit annoying,

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just visually annoying,

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when I'm, again, My theme here is navigating

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100,000 word documents effectively and having

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that extra visual noise was kind of a pain.

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So I ended up, first I just did like a dumb

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ox script as part of my publication kind of

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pipeline that removed headlines at the scene

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level. And then actually,

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because I ended up leaning so heavily on

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Pandoc, and Pandoc, for those of you who have

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not looked at recent versions of Pandoc,

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they've got a really fantastic way to use Lua

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at this point to write filters.

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So you can kind of take the AST of your

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document and run these very simple Lua

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filters over it. They used to be in Haskell,

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which I'm not smart enough to write Haskell

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is 1 of the things that I've discovered.

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I keep bouncing off of it,

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but I'm just smart enough to write Lua.

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And so I use a Lua filter now,

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which I'm happy to publish to anyone who's

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interested. That basically lets me say,

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you know, what level headings to get rid of

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the heading, but publish the content.

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And part of the reason that's been useful is

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that some of the other novels I'm working on

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for example have different levels of

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hierarchy where maybe there's a part and then

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you know at the top level and then chapter

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and then scene and it's now the third level

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instead of the second and it's much easier in

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the Lua to just be like remove the third

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level headings or the second level headings

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or whatever it is so that's been that's been

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helpful.

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[Speaker 0]: Great, Moving on to the next question,

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slightly off topic, where can we see your

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novels?

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[Speaker 1]: Oh well yeah, you can,

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they're on Amazon, there's 2 of them and a

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book of short stories.

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I think the short stories and the second

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novel, which is called World Enough in Time,

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which is the 1 that kind of prompted this

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talk, are probably of more interest to this,

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to the Emacs focused group.

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The first one's like a philosophical murder

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mystery, but the World Enough in Time is a

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kind of Douglas Adams inspired sci-fi comedy

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about kind of hijinks on a relativistic speed

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space cruiser, which was a lot of fun to

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write. It has a lot of twisty subplots,

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which is where I developed that technique of

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being able to filter down to tags and see a

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reduced version of the novel,

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which was very handy when trying to juggle 13

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subplots. So yeah, check it out.

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[Speaker 0]: Great, we'll make sure that you have the

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links available on the talk page afterwards.

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Right now I sadly have to host so I cannot

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look up the links but we'll make sure or if

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[Speaker 1]: I put it in there for you.

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[Speaker 0]: anyone in the chat... Oh you did?

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Yeah. In the meantime we'll move on to the

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next question. Have you looked at the Denote

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signature features? The hierarchical nature

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of Lumen's ideas and index cards works well

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with Denote signatures.

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So are you familiar with Denote first?

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[Speaker 1]: I am not. No, it sounds like something that I

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should check out.

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[Speaker 0]: Yeah, Denote is a way to work with slip

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boxes. We talked a little bit about it

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earlier today. We talked about Orgroam,

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we talked about Denote as well as a lighter

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alternative to Orgroam.

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And yeah, the organization with index cards

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feels like it's something that would highly

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benefit from linking and back links and any

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kind of UX functionality for relating pieces

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of information. So yeah,

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definitely look it up.

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[Speaker 1]: Yeah, I'm a heavy org-roam user.

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I use org-roam for a lot of different stuff

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and I would love, I will definitely check out

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Denote as an alternative.

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[Speaker 0]: Sure, I'm not particularly personally

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familiar with what Signature is within Denote

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and it'd be great if the person who asked the

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question could perhaps provide more details

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so that Edmund could get a little more

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information when he returns to the document.

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But yeah, if you're using Org-ROM,

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you're already within the mindset that you

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need, and perhaps you'd gain a little bit

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extra stuff from using Dino's signature,

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I assume. We have 8 minutes.

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We're still good on time.

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Next question, do you have a workflow

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combining handwritten index cards and org

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mode?

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[Speaker 1]: Great question. I do not.

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I do write by hand when I get,

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I don't know what a good term for it is,

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I'll call it like editorial paralysis or

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something when I find it very hard to move

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forward in something because I keep going

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back and tweaking. And I will handwrite stuff

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at that point and then type it in because

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it's so much harder to get stuck in editing

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mode when you have to move forward on the

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page. I don't use index cards.

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In the blog article that I link in my talk,

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the ewj.io slash emacs 1,

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I did try using handwritten or spreadsheet

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outlines at 1 point and found them very,

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very clumsy for novel writing just because I

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do so much, I mean, I do so much revision

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that moving things around meant that I had to

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keep 2 things in sync with each other,

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the pros and the outline.

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And that was what really led me to Org Mode

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as a way to keep the, again,

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I think part of the key for me is keeping the

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outline and the pros right next to each other

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in a way that they move around which is just

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really, I don't know, for me really really

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powerful.

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[Speaker 0]: Okay great, so we finished the list of

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questions available on the pad,

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but I see that some people have joined us on

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BBB, so hi everyone. If you have any

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questions feel free to unmute yourself and

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ask them. Otherwise, we might go on a break.

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So I'm going to give you about 10 seconds to

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unmute yourself. Or if you just want to add

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more questions on the pad,

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that's also fine. And that'll give you about

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30 seconds. Otherwise,

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we'll need to go on a break.

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And in the meantime, I'll thank you,

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Edmund, for your presentation,

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because it's always nice,

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you know, we The reason why we have 2 tracks,

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and we've been having 2 tracks for the last 2

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or 3 editions of EmacsConf is because it's

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really nice to have those talks which are

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still related to Emacs and to far distance

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developments because we are obviously using

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packages. But it's really nice to see when we

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foray into other areas like writing or any

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kind of academia-based topics.

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So thank you, it's really nice.

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It brings different colors to the spectrum of

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what EmacsConf is and what ultimately Emacs

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is as well. Thank you.

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[Speaker 1]: Well thanks to everyone who tuned in and Leo

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thanks to you and all the other organizers

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for putting this together.

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Appreciate it.

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[Speaker 0]: Thank you. All right I think we're going to

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go on a little break for 5 minutes because I

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don't see other questions being asked.

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So everyone we'll see you again in 5 minutes

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and thank you again, Edmund.

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[Speaker 1]: Cheers.