rlazo's blog

This is an off-topic post. I don't like to do OT, but this is the first and last post from my brand new math category to be posted also as an Emacs entry. A little bit of math doesn't hurt.

Have you ever wonder why does really mean the e constant? You know, besides the number 2.7182828? Well, I've found the best explanation here.

I've always loved math. Don't get me wrong, I'm pursuing a Computer Science BA degree, but there are some fundamental math concepts that I don't fully understand altought I use them. I used to be more insistent but I've somewhat lost that interest over the years. To try to revert this I'm starting this new "math" category on my blog.

If you have ever read the emacs-help mailing list, I'm sure you have seen this picture:

That ASCII-art box is great for many things, specially when used to describe a function, variable or key. The necesary package is boxquote. And to have all its power at your fingertips, a snippet for your .emacs

;;;_. boxquote

(require 'boxquote)

(global-set-key (kbd "C-c b y")   'boxquote-yank)
(global-set-key (kbd "C-c b r")   'boxquote-region)         
(global-set-key (kbd "C-c b u")   'boxquote-unbox-region)
(global-set-key (kbd "C-c b t")   'boxquote-title)          
(global-set-key (kbd "C-c b i")   'boxquote-insert-file) 
(global-set-key (kbd "C-c b k")   'boxquote-kill) 
(global-set-key (kbd "C-c b s")   'boxquote-shell-command)
 
(global-set-key (kbd "C-c b b")   'boxquote-buffer)
(global-set-key (kbd "C-c b p")   'boxquote-paragraph) 
(global-set-key (kbd "C-c b n")   'boxquote-narrow-to-boxquote)

(global-set-key (kbd "C-c b w")   'boxquote-where-is) 
(global-set-key (kbd "C-c b d f") 'boxquote-describe-function)
(global-set-key (kbd "C-c b d k") 'boxquote-describe-key)
(global-set-key (kbd "C-c b d v") 'boxquote-describe-variable)

Here is the link to the gmane archive of the original message.

Update: while reading this wiki entry I found that you need to quote your alias only if you are writing it directly on the prompt. On the alias file you don't quote anything. In fact, you don't need to modify the alias file by hand because emacs writes it for any alias you define on the prompt.

(This is mostly a personal note but it may be useful to somebody else)

I'm not sure that everybody knows (the manual version I have doesn't mencion it) but to configure an alias for eshell is as easy as this:

On the .eshell/alias file just add

  alias ls ls -la $*

This is a taken from this blog post. You can read there a more lispy way of doing it.

Also, take a look at this interesting this wiki entry

A quick update. I missed the schedule by some days, but here is the release candidate for the 0.2 version.

• Fixed bug #4
• New TODO file, with ideas for new features. If you want to help and don't know where to start this is for you

Grab it while it's hot!