Emacs 24.4 released

[webkike]

I've been going off like a broken record in the comment pages for these posts, since I'm such an Emacs fanatic. But I'll say it again, this release is great! Rectangular mark mode, better web browser -- Emacs hasn't stopped getting better

[fafner]

Rectangular mark mode is really awesome. It makes working with rectangles a lot easier. It is now so well integrated into my workflow that I'm really annoyed when I have to use an older Emacs version.

[sillysaurus3]

Emacs has a web browser?

[melling]

You know what Emacs is? It's a big Lisp interpreter. It was made to be extensible so that it could do anything. It could be your IDE, for example.

http://cedet.sourceforge.net

The problem is that it isn't a good enough Lisp engine to be very good at anything beyond the great text editor, which it has been since the early 1980's.

Avoiding the really hard problems and building a better emacs browser doesn't really help anyone. At some point, people will realize that the concept behind Emacs is great but could be better done in another high performance language. JavaScript in a browser? Clojure?

[imakesnowflakes]

> better web browser...

I couldn't get logins to bitbucket work with eww, because it seems it is not sending the referrer headers. I couldn't find any way to turn it on..

[mark_l_watson]

I agree - a great update. I especially like it when I am in -nw terminal mode and being able to use F10 to get access to the menu items I don't remember the shortcuts for.

[RexRollman]

Is there a screenshot somewhere?

[qmr]

> better web browser

Hah, seems like an argument for vim.

[jpfr]

Besides emacs 24.4 being an awesome release by itself, it also means esr can finally transition the development to git.

That will render the project a lot more accessible for new developers and ad-hoc bugfixing.

[dfc]

For anyone that is interested in testing out the new git repo: git://gitorious.org/emacs-transition/review6.git

It is remarkably fast compared to the bzr repository. ESR's conversion takes 10 hours to complete.

[jmount]

Building on OSX Mavericks (assuming XCode and XQuartz already around)

1) Download from http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/

   emacs-24.4.tar.gz

   emacs-24.4.tar.gz.sig

2) Confirm:

   gpg --keyserver pgp.mit.edu --recv-keys A0B0F199

   gpg --verify emacs-24.4.tar.gz.sig

3) Build (from INSTALL):

   cd emacs-24.4

   ./configure  --with-jpeg=no --with-gif=no --with-tiff=no

   make

   src/emacs -Q 

   make install

4) run:

   /usr/local/bin/emacs

[CDRdude]

I'm a comparative youngin to most of the people here, and I've never tried emacs. I'd like to learn my way around it someday, but I don't know how high of a priority I should place on it. I've managed to pick up enough vim to make my life easier, would learning my way around emacs also get me a productivity boost? How good is evil mode?

[jazzychad]

I think this thread is my best shot at getting this question answered.. I've been using Emacs 23.x for the last several years because the buffer-switcher behavior changed in Emacs 24 and I have no idea how (or if it's even possible) to get the previous behavior back?

In Emacs 23 and below (for as long as I've used Emacs), I would change buffers by hitting F10-b (F10 brings up menu, b is shortcut for Buffers).

Then there is a nice little list of open buffers and the first letter of the filename is usually the shortcut to switch to that buffer.

This made it really fast to switch back and forth between multiple files (I want to go to index.html == F10-b-i ; now I want to switch back to about.html == F10-b-a), it was very simple.

Emacs 24 changed that behavior and so the quick switching between buffers based on the first letter of their filename went away.

Does anyone else know what I'm talking about? Is it possible to get the previous behavior in 24? I'm slowly finding packages that won't compile in Emacs 23 anymore b/c they depend on new Emacs 24 elisp functions. I only ever use Emacs from inside a terminal (emacs -nw), so that's why I'm navigating buffers by the F10 menu.

EDIT: Well, I may be an idiot. I just downloaded the latest 24 build and it seems to be working as before again! Not sure when this changed, but maybe this is now a non-issue. I feel a bit silly, but maybe this will help someone else?

[hsuresh]

C-x C-b brings up a list of open buffers. Is that the same as what you are looking for?

[dimitar]

Have you tried ido mode? Ido-switch-buffer works nicely and it can be customized.

[ilyabraude]

I may be missing something, but try C-x b instead of F-10 b

[viksit]

Why not use C-x b <letter>?

[ezequiel-garzon]

In Ubuntu I'm unable to activate orgtbl-mode unless I first switch to org-mode. This didn't happen with Emacs 23. Has anybody experienced the same? How can I check if this has been reported? Thanks.

Edit: Seriously, people? You take the time to downvote and not to point in a direction to contribute to make Emacs better? So much for the attacks on Stack Overflow and its strict policies and policing... And anyway, how off topic is this comment? Peace.

[omaranto]

Try adding (require 'org-table) to your .emacs. My guess is that you only have (require 'org-install) or something like that currently. (Running the org-mode function will load several org libraries, including org-table, if they aren't loaded already, which is why orgtbl-mode does work after the first use of org-mode in the setup I'm guessing you have.)

[wging]

There's actually a StackExchange site specifically for emacs now: https://emacs.stackexchange.com

[ibrahima]

How'd you get Emacs 24.4 on Ubuntu? Is there a PPA or did you compile from source?

[technomancy]

Hacker News is not a great place for bug reports, just saying.

[craigching]

If you're looking for GNU emacs on Mac OS X, this is the place I use [1]. Note that it's not there just yet, so be a bit patient. They've been doing RC builds, you can seem them here [2].

[1] -- http://emacsformacosx.com/

[2] -- http://emacsformacosx.com/builds

[cenazoic]

This is the best discussion of the different versions of emacs available for MacOS I've seen (including emacsformacos):

http://emacs.stackexchange.com/questions/271/what-is-the-dif...

Short version: Lunaryorn: "I used to get them from Emacs for Mac OS X, but now I use Homebrew, because it supports more libraries, notably GNU TLS for encrypted network connections.

All in all: Use brew install emacs --HEAD --use-git-head --cocoa --with-gnutls --with-rsvg --with-imagemagick :)"

[viksit]

Weirdly, 24.4rc1 from the builds section is really wonky on my OS X Mavericks install. On scroll, the buffers go "above" the window and the top bar breaks up into tiny pieces and scrolls with the content. Ugh.

[mark_l_watson]

I just built it from source yesterday - easy. Search for "OS X" in the install file for directions.

[baby]

> A built-in web browser (M-x eww)

What ! Anyone has screenshots of that?

Is there a windows release somewhere?

[fafner]

http://larsmagne23.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/eww.png

It's from an early version though (over a year old)

[craigching]

This is where I generally pick up Windows releases (though I don't use Windows much anymore):

http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/emacs/windows/

24.4 is not yet there though.

[fanf2]

Emacs has had an add-on web browser called Emacs/W3 for 20 years. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emacs/W3

[viksit]

Is it me or is that browser (after looking at the screenshot) really "eww"?

[Dewie]

I've been thinking about using a simpler browser for reading simple documents. The motivation is to have a sort of "minimalism", as in using simpler programs to do simple things, and not get easily distracted by all the bells and whistles in a more complex application (like for example Firefox). This, I think, would be aided by using a simpler browser that could for example be run in a virtual terminal for reading things like documentation, in the context of developing where I will need a terminal (and maybe also a graphical text editor), anyway. So then there is less context-switching, presumably.

I am not someone who tries to do everything within Emacs[0] (yet?), but this seems like something that might be able to fit nicely with this kind of style, since I can restrict myself to only using Emacs and terminals for developing and reading online documentation. Does anyone enjoy working/developing like this?

[0] Yes, I see the slight contradiction in wanting to do things in simpler software, and then suggesting doing those simpler things within Emacs. :P

[jsilence]

For distraction free writing, M-x toggle-frame-fullscreen and (set-fringe-mode '(120 . 120)).

There used to be a bug in earlier emacs Versions requiring a Patch for proper fullscreen. Have not tried this for a while, but now it seems to work nice and smooth.

[throwaway20148]

I like writeroom-mode[1] for distraction free writing. I only use emacs in a terminal that's always fullscreen, but I imagine it works just fine in any case.

https://github.com/joostkremers/writeroom-mode

[1ris]

OT: What happened to Guileemacs?

[davexunit]

There's been some really good progress lately.

http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/GuileEmacs

[jml7c5]

See http://lwn.net/Articles/615220/ and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8328206 for recent discussions of the subject.

[b3b0p]

If one wants to start using Emacs is there a recommended starter package that is recommended over others instead of starting from scratch that can be learned from over time?

I want to start using Emacs, but starting with a blank slate leaves much to be desired. Especially when a someone new to Emacs doesn't know what's available or what can be done or how.

[imakesnowflakes]

Can some one tell me why windows Emacs still does not have a working shell?

One cannot easily run ssh from a shell in windows emacs. I have found that I cannot push to a bitbucket repo that uses http authentication too from the shell. But if I run them from a cmd window, these works fine.

What is the technical issue that is preventing emacs from fixing this?

[Derbasti]

As far as I understand this, this is a problem with git on Windows. Shells work just fine with Emacs on Windows, it just can't supply the git password for some reason.

[hrjet]

I am not an Emacs user. A long time Vim user who is always on the fence; evil mode got me interested in Emacs again.

Can anyone please shed some light on the browser? Is it implemented in pure Lisp? Is it graphical? Does it support javascript?

[tuhdo]

It supports html and css, but not Javascript. It is implemented in pure Elisp.

I wrote a few introduction guides to Emacs and its ecosystem: http://tuhdo.github.io/ . The guides do not include evil-mode though, as I use Emacs key bindings. But installing evil-mode is easy, and you can immediately use Vim key bindings for editing.

[peatmoss]

Can't wait until homebrew is updated to try this out. A part of me is morbidly curious to try out the new web browser. This may be the impetus I've been needing to make the jump to GNUs for my email.

[fafner]

The web browser (named eww) is of course limited by the display engine of Emacs. So don't expect too much. But for reading documentation in html format it works well for me so far and I guess that's the biggest use-case for it.

[paseante]

Shameless spam: https://github.com/kovan/dopemacs

[MarcScott]

Just checked and it's now available to brew

[dimitar]

Is there a way to get a list of mirrors that actually have it? I got tired of searching them so I downloaded it from GNU.

[lstrope]

EWW works well even in a terminal!

[flyrain]

Great job! I really like the new brower: eww, and develop a plugin for dictionary in Emacs.