Xah Emacs Blog

• added a russian layout
• Xah Fly Keys News
• 🆕 Emacs: Xah Fly Keys, Key for Org-Mode

major additions and new page

• Emacs: Xah Fly Keys Customization
• 🆕 Emacs: Xah Fly Keys, Add Keys to Switch Mode
• 🆕 Emacs: Xah Fly Keys, Add a Global Leader Key
• 🆕 Emacs: Xah Fly Keys, Modify Leader Key Sequence
• 🆕 Emacs: Xah Fly Keys, Setup Keys for Major Mode
• 🆕 Emacs: Xah Fly Keys, Create a New Layout
• 🆕 Emacs: Xah Fly Keys Escape Key
• 🆕 Emacs: Xah Fly Keys Mode Status Indicator
• 🆕 How to Make the CapsLock Key do Home Key
• 🆕 Emacs: Xah Fly Keys, Emacs Daemon
• 🆕 Emacs: Xah Fly Keys for Russian Layout

• Emacs: Xah Fly Keys, Create a New Layout

• 2024-04-22
• Emacs: Xah Fly Keys
• Major rewrite the keyboard layout code. Before, to define a new layout, you have to create a alist of key mappings, now, you just draw a text diagram. Lots new layouts, some esoteric removed.

• Xah Fly Keys News

• 2024-04-22
• Emacs: Xah Elisp Mode (xah-elisp-mode.el)
• changed completion to use obarray again. in function template, option changed to just comma.

• ELisp: Read File Content as String or Lines

• ELisp: Write File

• Emacs: Backup Current File 🚀
• Emacs: Delete Current File 🚀

• ELisp: Get Buffer String

• 2024-04-21
• xah-elisp-util.el
• xah-trim-string removed. new: xah-print-hash , xah-alist-to-hash , xah-hashtable-equal. removed the history comment block

• xah talk show 2024-04-19 Ep546 emacs lisp coding

• 🆕 Microsoft Clippy in Vim

• ELisp: Pretty Print Hash Table 🚀

• 
  4chan Emacs Xah

• 
  Fixed the Emacs Control Key

• Emergency vim

• Emacs Keys: Layout Diagram

• Xah Talk Show 2024-04-13 Ep544 Did Richard Stallman Create Emacs? Happy Hacking Keyboard, Lexical vs Dynamic Scope

• History of Emacs, Who Truly Created Emacs?
• History of LISP, Emacs, Symbolics (Daniel Weinreb Rebut Richard Stallman)
• Richard Stallman Stole Emacs Source Code from James Gosling

• Famous Programers on How Common Lisp Sucks

• Why Emacs Keys are Painful

• Best Keyboards for Emacs

• ELisp: Regex Functions

updated. added regexp-quote

• 2024-04-06
• Emacs: Xah Fly Keys
• xah-open-file-at-cursor now can open path that start with file:///d:/xyz

• Emacs: HTML XML Syntax Validator

major update

• Emacs: Xah JS Mode (JavaScript)

• Emacs: Keyboard Macro
• Emacs: Visual Line Mode
• Emacs: line-move-visual

Xah Emacs Packages update

• 2024-04-04
• Emacs: xah-get-thing.el
• xah-get-pos-of-symbol return (vector (point) (point)) if point is around blank, instead of nil.

• 2024-04-04
• Emacs: Xah Elisp Mode (xah-elisp-mode.el)
• added all string functions. syntax coloring and completion. removed extra faces.

• 2024-04-04
• Emacs: Xah JS Mode (JavaScript)
• complete rewrite syntax coloring.

• xah-insert-random-id.el
• new function xah-random-string

• 2024-04-02
• Emacs: Xah Dired Mode (xah-dired.el)
• xah-dired-dir-ignore-regex-list new.
• xah-list-empty-dirs and xah-delete-empty-dirs not going thru .git
• xah-dired-powershell-path changed to default of pwsh.
• xah-dired-open-in-inkscape-path now by default is inkscape.exe or inkscape, instead of a windows fullpath.

bug fix

• Emacs: Insert Random Number or String 🚀

• Emacs, Why You Should Not Use the Package Dash (2020)

updates

• Emacs: Show Variable Value
• 🆕 Emacs: List All Variables
• Emacs: List All Hooks
• Emacs: Lookup Function Documentation
• Emacs: List All Functions

• ELisp: Sequence Functions
• ELisp: Map, Iteration

• ELisp: Benchmark, Test Speed

• 2024-03-30
• Emacs: Xah Wolfram Mode
• rename xah-wolfram-replace-special-char to xah-wolfram-replace-named-chars, and added more chars. rename xah-wolfram-replace-regexp-pairs-region to xah-wolfram--replace-regexp-pairs
• 2024-03-31
• xah-wolfram-replace-name-chars added more chars. syntax for special char, the backslash, no longer shows bad coloring.

minor updates

• ELisp: Get universal-argument
• Emacs: Universal Argument (prefix arg)

• Emacs: Insert Random Number or String 🚀

updates

• Emacs: Xah HTML Mode Tutorial
• Emacs: Xah HTML Mode

• 2024-03-30
• Emacs: xah-get-thing.el
• new, xah-get-pos-of-word, xah-get-pos-of-word-or
• new. xah-get-pos-of-symbol, xah-get-pos-of-symbol-or

updates and new.

• Emacs Keys: Define Key
• 🆕 Emacs Keys: Good and Bad Key Choices
• 🆕 Emacs Keys: Keybinding Functions (emacs 29)
• 🆕 Emacs Keys: Swap CapsLock Control
• Emacs: Why You Should Not Swap CapsLock and Control

• 🆕 Emacs: Close Buffer

• Emacs Keys: Add Custom Keys

• xahemacs key system:
• all major mode keys start with tab.
• all user defined keys start with delete key.
• all emacs commands start with space (in Xah Fly Keys).

updates

• Emacs Keys: Menu Key

• ELisp: Quick Start
• ELisp: Create List
• ELisp: Proper List

• ELisp: List
• ELisp: Vector
• ELisp: Sequence, Array
• ELisp: Hash Table

• 🆕 Emacs Color Names Not Compatible with CSS

• 2024-03-25
• Emacs: Xah HTML Mode
• xah-html-pre-tag-to-new-file major rewrite. xah-html-major-modes removed. xah-html-htmlize-region and other minor refactor. xah-html-clone-file-in-link rewrite.
• 2024-03-28
• massive internal change.

• new, xah-html-add-byline, xah-html-author-info

• ELisp: Number
• ELisp: Equality Test
• ELisp: If then else (Conditional)
• ELisp: Map, Iteration

• Emacs: List Colors, Name, Hexadecimal
• 🆕 Emacs: Insert Random CSS Color 🚀
• 🆕 Emacs: Convert CSS Color, RGB to HSL 🚀
• 🆕 Emacs: Color CSS Color Strings 🚀
• ELisp: Convert Color Formats: RGB HSL HSV

• Xah Emacs Commands

updated

• ELisp: thing-at-point
• ELisp: Problems of thing-at-point
• Emacs: xah-get-thing.el

massive update. get XahEmacs

Xah Emacs Packages updates

• xah-fly-keys.el
• rename xah-get-block-pos to xah-get-pos-of-block

• xah-get-thing.el
• major rewrite. some 6 or so functions, many return a vector instead of cons.

• xah-css-mode.el
• completion now work on empty spot or line

• xah-elisp-mode.el
• completion now work on empty spot or line. added all seq- keywords. now require xah-get-thing.el

• xah-html-mode.el
• use many new functions in xah-get-thing.el
• massive refactor, now 7 files.

• xah-html-browser.el
• xah-html-cmd.el
• xah-html-engine.el
• xah-html-keywords.el
• xah-html-linkify.el
• xah-html-mode.el
• xah-html-path.el

• xah-js-mode.el
• completion now work on empty spot or line. now require xah-get-thing.el . lot other misc fixes

• xah-powershell-mode.el
• completion now work on empty spot or line. now require xah-get-thing.el

• xah-python-mode.el
• completion now work on empty spot or line. now require xah-get-thing.el

• xah-wolfram-mode.el
• completion now work on empty spot or line. xah-wolfram-get-bounds-of-block removed. xah-wolfram-get-bounds-of-block-or-region removed. new is xah-get-pos-of-block new is xah-get-pos-of-block-or

• 🆕 ELisp: Number

• Emacs: Case Sensitivity in Text Search Commands
• 🆕 ELisp: Case Sensitivity (case-fold-search)

code update

• Emacs: Run Current File 🚀

• 2024-03-21
• Emacs: Xah Fly Keys
• xah-run-current-file major rewrite. Now uses xah-run-current-file-dispatch to dispatch to special cases. Removed compiling java and allow user to pass in options. Removed xah-run-current-file-before-hook, xah-run-current-file-after-hook.

• 2024-03-21
• Emacs: Xah Wolfram Mode
• xah-wolfram-eval-region new. key may change
• xah-wolfram-run-script changed parameter, major rewrite. xah-wolfram-run-script-print-last new. also changed key for xah-wolfram-run-script-print-all

• 2024-03-21
• Emacs: Xah Elisp Mode (xah-elisp-mode.el)
• added all seq- keywords and map-

• 2024-03-22
• Emacs: Xah Go Mode (xah-go-mode.el)
• xah-go-run-current-file new.

• 2024-03-19
• Emacs: xah-get-thing.el
• new: xah-get-block-pos, xah-get-block-pos-or, xah-get-pos-of, xah-get-pos-of-or. they return a vector instead of cons. so they can be used with seq-setq and seq-let.

• 2024-03-19
• Emacs: Xah HTML Mode
• major internal change. xah-get-bounds-of-thing-or-region etc are replaced by xah-get-pos-of etc. almost all commands are affected, but should be no behavior change. saved 100 lines of code.

• 2024-03-19
• Emacs: Xah Fly Keys
• internal change. now use seq-setq. xah-get-bounds-of-block and xah-get-bounds-of-block-or-region removed. replaced by xah-get-block-pos and xah-get-block-pos-or. diff is the new return vector. old return cons.

• 2024-03-17
• Emacs: Xah Wolfram Mode
• xah-wolfram-run-script now async, major fix bug. thanks to ytzemih.
• xah-wolfram-eval-current-line new

• 2024-03-17
• Emacs: Xah Fly Keys
• xah-run-current-file fix a bug on calling xah-wolfram-run-script if exist.

major updates on regex

• Emacs: Regular Expression
• ELisp: Regular Expression

• 🆕 Emacs: Regex Backslash in Command Prompt
• 🆕 ELisp: Regex Backslash in Lisp Code
• 🆕 ELisp: Regex in Readable Syntax, Package Rx

• Emacs: List Matching Lines
• Emacs: Sort Lines

• ELisp: Read File

• unix programer's idiocy on ASCII obsession and the damage it has done.
• https://youtu.be/QXQr4Vh3OEU?t=1867
• Xah Talk Show 2023-08-26 Emacs 29 Features

emacs font-lock-reference-face gone

• https://lists.nongnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2022-09/msg01022.html

• 2024-03-15
• Emacs: Xah Fly Keys
• xah-escape-quotes changed key
• xah-smart-delete fixed a error when universal-argument is called and cursor is on the right of a string quote. thanks to zadca123 for report.

• 2024-03-12
• Emacs: Xah HTML Mode
• major change. xah-html-langcode-map is replaced by xah-html-langcode-table and xah-html-langcode-fname-ext-table. was alist, now hashtable.
• better keys. now arrow keys for navigating tags. e.g. see xah-html-goto-matching-tag. and xah-html-join-tags now has key n.

• 2024-03-09
• Emacs: Xah AutoHotkey Mode
• updated, and renamed xahk-mode to xah-ahk-mode.

• 2024-03-06
• Emacs: Xah Fly Keys
• xah-insert-ascii-angle-bracket new. thanks to jamesni.

• 2024-03-05
• Emacs: Xah HTML Mode
• added support for fsharp pre code.
• xah-html-image-to-link better boundary check

• 2024-03-05
• Emacs: Xah Elisp Mode (xah-elisp-mode.el)
• fix coloring for property symbols that contain hyphen

minor update

• ELisp: Create Function Templates for Major Mode

reviewed with minor edit.

• Emacs: How to Edit Lisp Code
• Emacs Init: Highlight Brackets
• Emacs Init: Auto Insert Closing Bracket (electric-pair-mode)
• Emacs: Insert Brackets by Pair 🚀
• Emacs: Navigate Lisp Code as Tree

now, a system for setting up org-mode keys for Xah Fly Keys, so you don't have to press control.

• 🆕 Emacs: Xah Fly Keys, Setup Keys for Major Mode

• Emacs: Xah Fly Keys Customization

added section visual box, and other misc update.

• ELisp: Cursor Position Functions
• ELisp: Text Editing Functions
• ELisp: Mark, Region, Active Region
• ELisp: Get Buffer String
• ELisp: Functions on Line
• ELisp: Cut Copy Paste, kill-ring
• ELisp: thing-at-point
• ELisp: Find Replace Text in Buffer
• ELisp: Interactive Form

• ELisp: Character Type
• ELisp: Problems of thing-at-point

added section visual box, and other misc update.

• Emacs: Outline, org-mode Intro
• Emacs: Org Mode Markup Cheatsheet
• Emacs: Org Mode Export
• Emacs: Using Org Mode for Todo
• Emacs: Org Mode, Work with Source Code (org-babel)
• Emacs: Open File in Org Mode
• Emacs: Org Mode Customization
• ELisp: Parse Org Mode

• 2024-03-01
• Emacs: Xah Dired Mode (xah-dired.el)
• xah-list-empty-dirs now output in its own buffer

• Xah Talk Show 2024-02-27 Ep540 Emacs Lisp Coding, Hand Pain, Dark Theme Fad, Solarize Disease

major update.

• ELisp: Simple Code Examples
• ELisp: Overview of Coding Emacs Lisp

• 2024-02-28
• Emacs: Xah HTML Mode
• xah-html-validate-xml-buffer now output to own buffer, still need more to do so that user can click to jump to error
• key change for xah-html-prev-opening-tag, xah-html-next-opening-tag, xah-html-goto-matching-tag
• removed xah-html-add-section-to-h2-region, xah-html-add-section-to-h3-region

• 2024-02-28
• Emacs: Xah Wolfram Mode
• Name completion is now tab space by default. Indentation is tab tab. Many misc tweaks on abbrev and template.

code update

• Emacs: Hexadecimal to Decimal 🚀

• code update
• Emacs: Convert File Line Ending 🚀

• 2024-02-27
• Emacs: Xah HTML Mode
• xah-html-convert-to-jpg now insert new below. (was above)
• xah-html-resize-img now insert new below. (was above)

• code update. prevent bad error of arg type, by adding check for nil
• Emacs: xah-fix-datetime 🚀

• 
  Xah Talk Show 2024-02-26 Ep539 Svalboard Datahand, First Impression

added new info

• Xah Lee's Typing Experience and RSI (Repetitive Strain Injury)

see also Famous Programers with Repetitive Strain Injury

• Emacs: Interactive Abbrev 🚀

• Google Censor Comp.Emacs Newsgroup. Erasing 30 Years of History

• Xah Talk Show 2024-02-21 Ep538 Unicode, Hieroglyph, LISP Keyboard, Ban Shift, Etc

• ELisp: Hash Table
• ELisp: Filter a List

• 2024-02-20
• Emacs: Xah Fly Keys
• moved global set key f7 for xah-fly-leader-key-map, outside xah-fly-use-control-key. thanks to Jacob L.

• 2024-02-20
• xah-elisp-util.el
• xah-fix-datetime added a error check if input doesn't contain digits. this prevent cryptic error about wrong arg type.

• 2024-02-20
• Emacs: Xah HTML Mode
• now xah-html-insert-tag has key tab space. not tab tab.
• xah-html-pre-tag-to-new-file no longer has key C-b. because the keybinding no always work, because its temp bind to the major mode. no have good solution now. bind a global key yourself
• xah-html-make-citation now check if date is valid, else cryptic error about wrong arg type.

• Best Keyboards for Emacs
• updated

• 2024-02-13
• Emacs: Xah Fly Keys
• kill-rectangle now has key (space r q), was (space r g) (dvorak notation).
• yank-rectangle now has key (space r k), was (space r r) (dvorak notation).
• Reason: the q is qwerty x, for cut. the new keys are more compatible with many other commands's keys in Xah Fly Keys, ending in qwerty x for cut, v for paste. plus , now hand alternates, as in most Xah Fly Keys keybinding style.
• xah-slash-to-double-backslash now has key space r / . was space r k. (dvorak notation)
• Rule about changing key is, maybe 1 key per year.
• xah-punctuation-regex now is just ascii double quote. used by xah-backward-punct, xah-forward-punct. i think this is better default. you can set them to any regex.

• 2024-02-13
• Emacs: Xah Find Replace (xah-find.el)
• removed returning a list of changes for all commands. the idea was, when called in lisp, it return the list of changes. in practice, when called interactively, the usually big return list printed into message buffer is very annoying. there is a proper way to fix it, but no have time now. also, to properly do return list in lisp call, i have to remove bunch of generated buffer and display too.

• 
  Richard Stallman Figurine

• Emacs Fun Index

dark theme with WolframLang code, Emacs: Xah Wolfram Mode

screenshot for fun and history

• Xah Talk Show 2024-02-01 Ep535 Live Coding in WolframLang, Math, Plane Curves Package

red light and dark theme

now, at night when lights are off, wife sleeping, i now turn on dark theme.

• Emacs Init: Set Color Theme
• Emacs: Theme Gallery
• PowerShell: Toggle Dark Theme
• CSS: Dark Theme

Apple is great, in that it can auto turn dark theme when sun goes down. Microsoft Windows cannot.

also, now when sun is down, my room is lit in red (red bulb), and all my screen is red tinted. (turn off the blue hue). Red is soothing.

• Red Light Bulb, JLAB Bluetooth Headphone

• Emacs: Edit Column Text, Rectangle

• 2024-01-30
• Emacs: Xah HTML Mode
• xah-convert-youtube-url-seconds-to-minute-second new
• xah-html-all-urls-to-link fixed a bug when there is selection.
• xah-html-convert-to-jpg now prints size.

• ELisp: Mark, Region, Active Region

yay Sacha Chua is doing emacs vids

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pc2kpqgg8pU
• Yay Emacs! 2024-01-21: Org Mode custom links, Spookfox, choosing what to hack on, and more
• by Sacha Chua
• 2024-01-21

• 2024-01-27
• Emacs: Xah Elisp Mode (xah-elisp-mode.el)
• added keywords • length< • length= • length>

• ELisp: Benchmark, Test Speed

new example. insert per item vs join as string and insert once.

• ELisp: Buffer Functions

new section on switch buffer, display buffer.

• Xah Talk Show 2024-01-23 Ep533 Emacs Lisp Normalize YouTube Url, Open All File Paths, How to Choose a Mouse

• 2024-01-23
• Emacs: Xah HTML Mode
• xah-html-youtube-normalize-url new

• 2024-01-23
• Emacs: Xah CSS Mode (xah-css-mode.el)
• fixed syntax color for css variable containing hyphen or lowline

code update

• Emacs: Add Period to Line Ends 🚀
• Emacs: Upcase Sentences 🚀
• Emacs: Reformat to Sentence Lines 🚀
• Emacs: Transpose Matrix 🚀

major re-org and update.

• Xah Emacs Commands

• Emacs: Bracket CAPITALIZED WORDS 🚀
• Emacs: Delete Backup in Current Dir Recursively 🚀

• 2024-01-20
• Emacs: Xah Fly Keys
• removed xah-forward-quote, xah-forward-quote-twice, xah-forward-quote-smart.
• added back xah-backward-punct (key 1), xah-forward-punct (key 2), xah-punctuation-regex (these were removed few months ago)
• xah-backward-left-bracket, xah-forward-right-bracket, now do not stop at straight double quote. (revert the experimental change about a month ago)

• Emacs: Move Cursor to Punctuation 🚀
• Emacs: Move Cursor to Bracket 🚀

• Xah Talk Show 2024-01-17 Ep531, Datahand, Svalboard, Emacs Xah Dired Mode

• 2024-01-16
• Emacs: Xah Dired Mode (xah-dired.el)
• new functions
• xah-move-file-to-dir
• xah-open-python-doc
• xah-empty-trash
• xah-list-emacs-backup
• xah-delete-emacs-backup
• xah-list-empty-files
• xah-delete-empty-files
• xah-list-empty-dirs
• xah-delete-empty-dirs

• 2024-01-15
• Emacs: Xah HTML Mode
• new xah-html-move-source-file-path, separated from xah-html-rename-source-file-path

xtodo work in progress

• ELisp: File and Directory Functions
• 🆕 ELisp: Get File Info
• ELisp: File Path Functions
• ELisp: Walk Directory, List Files

• ELisp: find-lisp.el

• 2024-01-14
• Emacs: Xah Dired Mode (xah-dired.el)
• xah-dired-unravel-dir, xah-dired-bundle-marked-files. new.

• 2024-01-12
• Emacs: Xah Find Replace (xah-find.el)
• xah-find--print-header, fixed a bug introduced in recent month that adds header in output twice. now the output buffer is named *xah-find out*

• 2024-01-12
• Emacs: Xah Fly Keys
• xah-run-current-file output buffer is now *xah-run output*. was *xah-run*.
• xah-cycle-hyphen-lowline-space internal code change.

• 2024-01-12
• Emacs: Xah HTML Mode
• xah-html-make-link-defunct now works on iframe. xah-html-make-iframe-defunct is new command.
• xah-html-pre-tag-to-new-file now use bat-mode (builtin) instead of dos-mode (external)
• xah-html-encode-ampersand-entity and xah-html-decode-ampersand-entity now prints a message.

• 2024-01-12
• Emacs: Xah Unicode Mode, xah-unicode-mode.el
• renamed xub-mode.el to xah-unicode-mode.el
• xah-unicode-emoji-info, new, experimental

• Emacs: Replace Invisible Unicode Chars 🚀

• ELisp: Convert Hexadecimal to Decimal
• Emacs: Convert Hexadecimal to Decimal
• Emacs: Hexadecimal to Decimal 🚀

• Emacs init file location in Microsoft Windows

• Emacs: Xah Lookup Web (xah-lookup.el)

• Emacs: Cycle Hyphen Lowline Space 🚀

• Emacs: Init File Tutorial
• Emacs: Where is Init File
• Emacs: Create Init File

• 2024-01-01
• Emacs: Xah Find Replace (xah-find.el)
• xah-find commands now use the same output buffer, do not generate a new each time.

• 2024-01-01
• Emacs: Xah Fly Keys
• xah-backward-left-bracket, xah-forward-right-bracket, now stop at straight double quote. (experimental)