Xah Talk Show 2026-06-27 Ep799. Milk, Tits, Caryatids. Emacs lisp command to change title case.
Video Summary (Generated by AI, Edited by Human.)
In this episode (Ep799), Xah Lee hosts a casual talk show while enjoying a Margarita. The session covers a mix of programming, literature, and personal anecdotes.
Key highlights include:
- Emacs Lisp Coding: The primary technical goal was to write an Emacs Lisp command to convert all H2 headings in a buffer to sentence case. During this process, Xah identifies and documents a documentation bug regarding the downcase-region function, noting that its third optional argument REGION-NONCONTIGUOUS-P is not documented in either the inline help or the GNU Emacs Lisp manual (0:45:00 - 1:16:30).
- Literature Favorites: Xah shares his top three favorite works of literature: The Arabian Nights, Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions, and The Tragedy of Titus Andronicus by Shakespeare (0:13:00 - 0:20:30).
- Philosophy and Ramblings: The discussion drifts into various topics, including on Anders Hejlsberg (creator of TypeScript and Delphi), the distinction between American and British title case styles, and the mythos surrounding the foundation of Rome (Romulus and Remus) (0:02:15 - 0:29:00, 1:30:00 - 1:43:00).
- Miscellaneous: Xah also touches upon his art blog, specifically an article titled "Milk, Tits, Caryatids" which references Greek mythology and architecture (1:36:00 - 1:42:00).
- Anders Hejlsberg, creator of csharp and typescript, why creating typescript is far more difficult than python.
- https://youtu.be/GnJkEU-gBls?t=134
- Princess Jasmine AI Porn
- https://youtu.be/GnJkEU-gBls?t=676
- Favorite Literature. Arabian Nights, Flatland, the Tragedy of Titus Andronicus
- https://youtu.be/GnJkEU-gBls?t=789
emacs lisp, write a command to change all h2 title to have sentence case, in current buffer
- brit way
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Video summary (Generated by AI, edited by human.)
- The American Way
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Video Summary (Generated by AI, Edited by Human.)
examples
- There is a Movie
- What About the Movie
- That's of Something
- the logical systematic way, cap every first letter of words
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Video Summary (Generated By AI, Edited By Human.)
- another logical way, lowercase all.
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video summary (generated by AI, edited by human.)
(defun xah-html-sentence-case-all-h2 () "Sentence case all html h2 headers in current buffer. URL `http://xahlee.info/talk_show/xah_talk_show_ep799.html' Created: 2026-06-27 Version: 2026-06-28" (interactive) (let (xbeg xend) (goto-char (point-min)) (while (re-search-forward "<h2[^>]*>" nil t) (setq xbeg (match-end 0)) (search-forward "</h2>") (setq xend (match-beginning 0)) (save-restriction (narrow-to-region xbeg xend) (downcase-region (point-min) (point-max)) (goto-char (point-min)) (upcase-char 1)))))
emacs lisp doc bug downcase-region
we discovered a documentation bug. in the inline documentation of the command downcase-region it has a optional third argument named REGION-NONCONTIGUOUS-P, but is not documentated.
and, it is not documentated in the gnu emacs lisp manual neither.
highlights
- emacs lisp, write command to change all Xah Talk Show title, move episode number before date. we decided not to do this. because, date is more universal than episode number.