emacs 23 is very near (emacs-fu) [LWN.net]

The emacs-fu site has a summary of features to be found in the upcoming emacs 23 release. "Emacs's character set is a superset of Unicode, with about four times the space available. That should be enough for the foreseeable future There are also many new character sets available, as well as new language environments, such as Chinese-GB18030, Khmer, Bengali, Punjabi, Gujarati, Oriya, Telugu, Sinhala, and TaiViet." Also pointed out is an implementation of butterfly mode.

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Looking forward to packages of this

Posted Jul 29, 2009 16:07 UTC (Wed) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link] (9 responses)

Here's where you can see the NEWS file listing all the medium-to-major changes: (view) (download) (annotate)

Really looking forward to poking around with this. Emacs is by far my favourite application.

Looking forward to packages of this

Posted Jul 29, 2009 16:24 UTC (Wed) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

I think this release may be the straw that breaks this particular camel's back and finally forces me into the horrible job of migration to Emacs from XEmacs (dozens of core patches to rewrite or figure out how to do without, a lot of config Lisp to make portable, it should be fun).

some highlights

Posted Jul 29, 2009 19:10 UTC (Wed) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link] (5 responses)

Like version 22, the big change is that there're hundreds of little improvements, such as:

transient-mark-mode is enabled by default
spell checking and fill-region now affect the region if one is highlighted
C-l now cycles between showing the screen centred on the cursor, with the cursor a the top, and at the bottom
DocView mode for viewing PDFs
Rmail now uses the Unix mbox format directly instead of converting to the Babyl
UTF8 being used internally
word wrap at screen edge (similar was already available in longline-mode)
More protocols over which TRAMP can do remote file editing

And with the tonne of improvement to the GUI and desktop integration, I might even give graphical Emacs a try.

some highlights

Posted Jul 29, 2009 22:31 UTC (Wed) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (4 responses)

Use of UTF-8 internally is not a 'little' internal improvement. Use of
antialiased fonts and fontconfig is not a 'little' visible improvement (it
was the biggest thing holding me to XEmacs; well, that and the inability
to open frames on several X sessions and TTYs at the same time, which is
also fixed in Emacs 23).

some highlights

Posted Jul 30, 2009 0:44 UTC (Thu) by jlokier (guest, #52227) [Link] (2 responses)

I shall be a little sad if Emacs loses support for the old fixed bitmap fonts when it gains fontconfig support.

Emacs is the one application on my desktop where the traditional fixed bitmap fonts still work, which I prefer to look at for long periods of fixed-width text work. I find none of the truetype fonts easy on the eye for programming, even those people recommend for consoles and text editors, probably due to growing up with and spending most of my life with bitmap fonts. Like some people's eyes track serifs, I think my eyes look for the little pixelly corners.

some highlights

Posted Jul 30, 2009 1:06 UTC (Thu) by pjdc (guest, #6906) [Link] (1 responses)

X's core fonts are still supported, although Xft (i.e. fontconfig) is tried first. You can use the font-backend frame property to adjust this policy.

Fontconfig can usually be told to use bitmapped fonts, although this can have interesting side-effects when bitmapped and outline versions of the same font family are present. Enabling bitmapped fonts may not take effect until you run "fc-cache -s -f" as root.

some highlights

Posted Jul 30, 2009 2:04 UTC (Thu) by foom (subscriber, #14868) [Link]

Yes, you can enable bitmaps fonts by linking /etc/fonts/conf.avail/70-yes-bitmaps.conf to /etc/fonts/conf.d and removing /etc/fonts/conf.d/70-no-bitmaps.conf

However, you'll also want to disable certain commonly-requested font families that are only available in linux as bitmapped fonts. I do this by dropping the following config snippet in /etc/fonts/conf.d/52-disabled-fonts.conf. (I cargo-culted this from somewhere, I don't actually know how fontconfig's XML configuration language works...)

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM "fonts.dtd">
<fontconfig>
 <match target="pattern" name="family" >
        <test name="family" qual="any" >
         <string>Helvetica</string>
        </test>
        <edit mode="assign" name="family" >
         <string>sans-serif</string>
        </edit>
 </match>
 <match target="pattern" name="family" >
        <test name="family" qual="any" >
         <string>Lucida</string>
        </test>
        <edit mode="assign" name="family" >
         <string>sans-serif</string>
        </edit>
 </match>
</fontconfig>

I don't understand how it is that linux distros think it's okay to ship the default configuration with terminal emulators that can't use bitmap fonts! It's really not cool! And now that emacs uses fontconfig too, they really need to get this bitmapped font situation resolved...

UTF8 is big alright

Posted Aug 3, 2009 18:29 UTC (Mon) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link]

You're probably right that I underrated the use of UTF-8 internally by listing it along with small changes, but since I already use Emacs 22 with Japanese and French without trouble, I'm wondering what new conveniences I'm going to get with 23.

Antinews available

Posted Jul 30, 2009 11:32 UTC (Thu) by dash (guest, #6182) [Link] (1 responses)

In addition to a description of the new features you get from upgrading to Emacs 23 (NEWS), they also have a description of the benefits you get by downgrading to Emacs 22.3 (Antinews).

I think they could have done a better job of promoting the crisp clarity gained from removing anti-aliased fonts, but otherwise a nice piece.

Antinews available

Posted Jul 30, 2009 21:22 UTC (Thu) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

I've long thought antinews is a wonderful idea that more projects should
take up. It forces you to consider possible tradeoffs and negative
consequences of all the nifty new stuff you just added: surely a good
thing.

emacs 23 is very near (emacs-fu)

Posted Jul 29, 2009 18:11 UTC (Wed) by klevin (guest, #36526) [Link] (7 responses)

I just wish there were better IDE tools for perl that worked with Emacs. I much prefer emacs as an editor, but have had to give it up recently due to its lack of code browsing and project management tools for perl.

emacs 23 is very near (emacs-fu)

Posted Jul 29, 2009 19:01 UTC (Wed) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link]

I don't write perl, so I've no personal experience, but did you try the emacswiki community?
www.emacswiki.org/emacs/PerlLanguage

emacs 23 is very near (emacs-fu)

Posted Jul 29, 2009 19:15 UTC (Wed) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link] (3 responses)

What the heck IDE do you use for Perl?? (I tried ActiveState a few years ago, bleah.)

If there's a Perl IDE that works better than a plain editor, I'd love to hear about it.

emacs 23 is very near (emacs-fu)

Posted Jul 29, 2009 21:49 UTC (Wed) by samlh (subscriber, #56788) [Link]

I've heard good things about Padre, I haven't tried it myself. It's written in Perl with wxWindows.

emacs 23 is very near (emacs-fu)

Posted Jul 30, 2009 20:49 UTC (Thu) by akupries (guest, #4268) [Link]

"ActiveState's Komodo has improved a lot in recent years. Now there are both free and commercial versions as well. You should try it again http://www.activestate.com/komodo/."

Disclosure: I work for ActiveState.

emacs 23 is very near (emacs-fu)

Posted Jul 30, 2009 23:00 UTC (Thu) by klevin (guest, #36526) [Link]

At the moment, I'm using Eclipse with the EPIC plugin. It's not horrible, but the syntax highlighting isn't as configurable as Emacs and the editor feels too much like Notepad to me. One of the things I miss the most is the ability to hit tab anywhere on a line and have it adjust the indentation to fit the current context and also the ability to have a non-intrusive text search interface. On the other hand, it does a pretty good job of code completion and browsing the project's code.

emacs 23 is very near (emacs-fu)

Posted Jul 30, 2009 11:36 UTC (Thu) by MKesper (subscriber, #38539) [Link] (1 responses)

Did you have a look at ECB ? At least Python is supported. :)

emacs 23 is very near (emacs-fu)

Posted Jul 30, 2009 23:05 UTC (Thu) by klevin (guest, #36526) [Link]

At one point, years ago, I had ECB mostly working with perl in XEmacs, but I've not been able to get ECB working for quite some time with either XEmacs or GNU Emacs.

It's official: Emacs 23 released

Posted Jul 30, 2009 11:12 UTC (Thu) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link]

emacs-devel: Emacs 23.1 released

Column mark...?

Posted Jul 30, 2009 20:41 UTC (Thu) by madscientist (subscriber, #16861) [Link] (6 responses)

I've been using Emacs for years and years (heck, I even used Gosling Emacs!) The one thing that I miss a lot in the newer versions is a way to show, visually, a given column (like column 80 or whatever).

Many other editors, even simple ones, have a way to enable a thin line or something at a given column position.

I really don't like to have >80 chars per line (in fact many times there are coding standards that require this). In the past I've simply set my Emacs frame width to 80 and not wrapped lines. But, with the newer fonts available in Emacs now, which are really nice and readable, an 80-char width just looks really skinny and squashed down. Plus sometimes you NEED more than 80 chars for other kinds of buffers (outputs of other kinds for example). The way my desktop is laid out I don't like to have lots of Emacs frames; I prefer one frame with lots of buffers (traditionalist I guess).

It would be SO excellent if I could add a visual vertical mark to either all buffers or, ideally, some buffers (text mode, programming modes, etc.) at a given column. Even just marking column 80 with a grey background would be OK.

I know about keeping the column number in the mode line but having to constantly check the mode line is really distracting and annoying.

Anyone?

Column mark...?

Posted Jul 30, 2009 21:30 UTC (Thu) by jalan (guest, #45659) [Link]

I don't know of anything that will put a vertical bar at the margin, but you might want to take a look at develock-mode (develock-el in debian) or highlight-beyond-fill-column (in emacs-goodies-el in debian).

Column mark...?

Posted Jul 31, 2009 9:36 UTC (Fri) by jnareb (subscriber, #46500) [Link]

See `column-marker` Emacs Lisp module (I think you can find it on Emacs Wiki, if it is not available in Emacs nowadays).

Column mark...?

Posted Aug 9, 2009 14:17 UTC (Sun) by troglobit (subscriber, #39178) [Link] (3 responses)

Check auto-fill-mode and fill-column to enable automatic wrapping, on word boundary, in any buffer. I use it mostly for HTML and plain/LaTeX text files but it is sure useful for coding as well.

Column mark...?

Posted Aug 9, 2009 15:55 UTC (Sun) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (2 responses)

Everyone knows about auto-fill-mode. What was being asked for was a
*visual indication* of where the fill boundary was.

(Doing it in a non-ugly fashion in the presence of proportional fonts
would be interesting.)

Column mark...?

Posted Aug 9, 2009 20:50 UTC (Sun) by troglobit (subscriber, #39178) [Link] (1 responses)

Sorry, I must sort of go ahead and disagree with you on that one ... not *everyone* knows about auto-fill-mode.

A visual indication of fill-column, for proportional fonts, can probably be achieved with http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/column-marker.el

Column mark...?

Posted Aug 9, 2009 22:41 UTC (Sun) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

auto-fill-mode is in the tutorial. Anyone who doesn't know it probably
doesn't know e.g. how to quit, or navigate around the buffer, either.

There is a certain minimal level of knowledge one can expect with editors
as complex as Emacs. Having read the tutorial is probably in that set.

(I'm still not sure that column-marker would manage to make the result
look nice. I'm not sure that's even possible. But I haven't tried it...)

Finally!

Posted Jul 30, 2009 21:15 UTC (Thu) by proski (guest, #104) [Link]

With the new character set I'll be able to comment my code in the language of Phaistos Disc interspersed with quotes in Klingon and phonetic symbols for Bronx cheer!