Emacs

This tip comes form the gnus mailing list from almost two years ago. I re-discover it today because, after writing a long email for a mailing list, I needed to change my original reply to a wide reply.

This is as easy as this:

Keybinding: `C-c C-f w'

Description: Insert `To' and `Cc' headers as if you were doing a wide reply even if the message was not made for a wide reply first.

The link for the original message is here

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

With this entry a new category for emacs related posts will begin here. Bits from emacs.help are tips and tricks found while reading the emacs.help mailing list

Well, this tips is how to use su inside eshell

From the post: "...Doing su or sudo su does not work like you expect. This works under the normal shell (M-x shell). I am su:ing quite much ..." If you have tried, using su inside eshell is quite paintful, and doesn't work very well. But, come on, there should be a way of doing it, right?

From the reply: "...Tramp 2.1 supports it. Try "cd/sudo::" in eshell..." And that's it! you have a fully functional 'suded' eshell with completition available.

libnotify and notification-daemon are part of the galago project, a "desktop presence framework". libnotify shows popup windows on your desktop to alert you from some event, like new mail or an IM. I like the idea of use a single program to manage all your desktop notifications instead of having to implement the same code over and over again on all your apps. AFAIK libnotify is desktop-agnostic so it should work on GNOME, KDE, Xfce, etc.

What about emacs? Well, if you use jabber.el for jabber chatting, erc or rcirc for IRC you can use libnotify to do some fancy notifications.

For erc this guy hacked the libnotify support. I haven't tested personally but seems interesting.

For rcirc there's a wiki page about rcircNotify

For jabber.el I wrote a libnotify alert, here it is the wiki page for it.

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