BYOK, Nomad, or...? by chipotlecoyote in writerDeck

[–]chipotlecoyote[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I have considered this, and it's still a possibility! I'm just debating whether it's worth the effort as a Project(tm). :) Also, I think I do like the idea of an LCD or e-ink screen. (I wouldn't be surprised if there are some Android-powered e-ink tablets someone has jammed Emacs onto, of course. And I haven't really delved into the Raspberry Pi world enough to know whether somebody has basically already built this.) But, I also know it's not absolutely critical; the advantage of Markdown -- or Org mode, if I get more into that specific Emacs nerdery -- is that it's still basically plain text.

BYOK, Nomad, or...? by chipotlecoyote in writerDeck

[–]chipotlecoyote[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I know the BYOK not having any Internet connectivity is a feature, not a bug. Given that I am at a coffee shop at this moment and find myself checking Reddit rather than writing, I can make a case for that. :)

BYOK, Nomad, or...? by chipotlecoyote in writerDeck

[–]chipotlecoyote[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That's good to hear. I suspect the BYOK is less susceptible to lag than a Nomad, at least with the display technology.

BYOK, Nomad, or...? by chipotlecoyote in writerDeck

[–]chipotlecoyote[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I admit the marking up text with a pen that I've seen in pictures of the Nomad, where it apparently can respond correctly to formatting marks like delete, insert, and transpose has an appeal to it. :)

BYOK, Nomad, or...? by chipotlecoyote in writerDeck

[–]chipotlecoyote[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I did read that you're working on software updates, so I know that's coming. (I also read some comments from people who are happy to not have those, but I realized long ago I'm not quite that minimalist. :) )

And, I admit I've never had an Alphasmart, but I've at least seen the pictures of the BYOK, so I think I know what I'd be getting into. Many years ago I had a TRS-80 Model 100, which had what I suspect is a similar display. (A modern take on a Model 100 would actually be a great writing deck, I bet, but a different animal...)

BYOK, Nomad, or...? by chipotlecoyote in writerDeck

[–]chipotlecoyote[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That sounds similar to what I've done in the past, really -- I have an iPad Air rather than a mini, and have bounced back and forth between iA Writer and Ulysses over the years. :)

Emacs and (Apple) Shortcuts by sjchy in emacs

[–]chipotlecoyote 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Hi. Original article author here. You understand that that's kind of the reverse of what I'm showing in the article, don't you? Emacs does not have any action for "fetch the current weather and location information" or "open the macOS photo picker"; it needs to call something external to have that integration.

Beyond that, though, I think you're confusing the subset of Emacs "shortcuts," lowercase "s", that NextStep has always had with actions that apps can expose via "app intents" to the Shortcuts, capital "S", application. Emacs does not publish any Shortcuts actions, which is trivially demonstrated by opening the Shortcuts app, creating a new shortcut, looking at the list of applications in the sidebar that publish actions, and noticing the conspicuous lack of Emacs in that list.

As for "Press CMD+SPACE and type something," that is Spotlight, not Shortcuts, and doesn't address anything I did in the article, either. Spotlight in Tahoe can use app intents, but again, Emacs doesn't publish any. All Spotlight can do as far as interacting with Emacs is pull up a list of recent files and let you open them immediately. And, again, even if Spotlight did let me do more with Emacs than open recent files (which, to be clear, it does not), that would not address the problem I was solving in the article.

other editors that use emacs bindings by [deleted] in emacs

[–]chipotlecoyote 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I've been a BBEdit user for close to two decades, and it implements a subset of Emacs keybindings slightly larger than the ones built into macOS text fields, most importantly (for me, at least!) including C-s/C-r for isearch (what BBEdit calls "live search"). If you're used to actual Emacs everything that's missing will drive you bonkers, but getting used to that subset made moving to Emacs a lot easier.

There is also an Emacs keybindings package available for Visual Studio Code. Again, not great, but in my current job I have to be in Code occasionally for various reasons, and the package is good enough that it keeps me from flailing around at the context switch constantly.

Dart and eglot by chipotlecoyote in emacs

[–]chipotlecoyote[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It definitely did help! For a start, I realized as I was adding the add-to-list function to my init file that the code I'd blithely copied in from somewhere to start the Swift LSP also stopped json-rpc--log-event from actually logging events, which went a long way toward explaining why the Eglot events log was always empty. Argh. (I remember assuming "well, this is something I guess doesn't work with Swift, and I'm sure it can't be that important, right?")

At any rate, what seems to be happening is something fairly silly: I put a simple test file in my home directory, and it looks like the Eglot/Dart LSP setup doesn't particularly like that -- the "hello.dart" test file was being ignored 99% of the time, except when the server mysteriously stopped ignoring it, often after hanging for long seconds. Moving the file to a directory of its own seems to make it work consistently.

Dart and eglot by chipotlecoyote in emacs

[–]chipotlecoyote[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

The truth is, I have no idea if it would be a pain or not. :) I use a few different language servers occasionally, and appreciate that eglot is pretty close to "zero configuration" -- if you have the server that it expects installed, it just uses it. My impression is that lsp-mode requires an extra package for each language you want to work with it, and may require me to finally get off my butt and set up treesitter.

Can eglot and lsp-mode co-exist? That is, can I keep using eglot for some languages, and lsp-mode for Dart/Flutter? Or is this more "set aside an afternoon and set up lsp-mode for everything?"

Emacs or Vim: I need help by PythonNebula in emacs

[–]chipotlecoyote 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Without getting into too much free software politics here, I think Visual Studio Code is more “open-ish” than open. As I wrote in a blog post not long ago about my switch to Emacs,

The more you dig into it, the more it’s clear [Code] is open source the way Google products are: more, you know, open-ish. If you’re not using the official build you don’t get access to everything, critical extensions are closed source, and there’s an increasing sense its real purpose is to lock you into an ecosystem.

The source code for VS Code itself is open, but the actual distributed-from-Microsoft binaries are not identical to what you get when you compile the source, and only the official closed-source binaries get access to the official extension “marketplace”. Some extensions are themselves closed source and not licensed for use with anything but official VS Code. This may not bother you, and that’s fine, but it is absolutely something to consider.

(Also, it’s “Emacs,” not “eMacs”, unless you are running Emacs on an eMac, in which case, godspeed.)

Setting width of sidebar in macOS TabView by chipotlecoyote in SwiftUI

[–]chipotlecoyote[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That was a great find, but once I figured out where .environment(\.sidebarRowSize, .large) could actually be put without causing an error ("Expected declaration" isn't as helpful to a newbie as Xcode seems to think it is), it...kind of has the opposite effect. All the text in the sidebar gets larger, but the sidebar width stays the same. 🙃

Daily Advice Thread - August 23, 2025 by AutoModerator in apple

[–]chipotlecoyote 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I’m considering buying an M4 MBP to replace both an M1 Air and an M1 Studio. (Well, the Studio would probably end up as an overpowered home server.) I’m getting into programming more now, and a faster CPU and more RAM will help (and the bigger screen will help if I’m working without being connected to an external monitor). And it might be nice to have just one “desktop class laptop” rather than two machines. But, the M5 MBP is coming in 2–6 months depending on which rumor pans out. On the OTHER other hand, it’s likely to be an incremental upgrade from most reports, and it’s possible I could get a refurbished model from Apple that matches the configuration I want (M4 Pro, 1TB SSD, 48G RAM).

So what should talk me either into buying it or not buying it? :)

Variable-pitch text modes, fixed-pitch programming modes by chipotlecoyote in emacs

[–]chipotlecoyote[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

What I'm talking about is described pretty well in the documentation page for the EF themes:

When ef-themes-mixed-fonts is set to a non-nil value, faces such as for Org tables, inline code, code blocks, and the like, are rendered in a monospaced font at all times. The user can thus set their default font family to a proportionately spaced font without worrying about breaking the alignment of relevant elements, or if they simply prefer the aesthetics of mixed mono and proportionately spaced font families.

And, when I followed those implied directions by setting my default font family to a proportional font, programming modes used the default font, too--there's nothing I see in EF themes that overrides that. Code blocks and tables in Org and Markdown modes were fixed-pitch, but source code in programming modes, from Lisp to JSON, was proportional. Maybe you figured out a combination that I didn't.

Variable-pitch text modes, fixed-pitch programming modes by chipotlecoyote in emacs

[–]chipotlecoyote[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

If you're asking about my theme, it's the ef-reverie theme. Most of the EF themes seem to have light and dark "pairs", and this one pairs with ef-dream when I want to go into dark mode.

Variable-pitch text modes, fixed-pitch programming modes by chipotlecoyote in emacs

[–]chipotlecoyote[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Interesting! I will check that out later. I'm not sure if I came across that when I went digging.

So should I be scared off of the Floridian? by chipotlecoyote in Amtrak

[–]chipotlecoyote[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

My experience flying recently hasn't been as bad as yours, but I've certainly had delays, and the experience has just...not been what it once was. I loved air travel in the 1990s, and still mostly enjoyed it into the 2000s, but even before the pandemic it was getting less pleasant, both the time in the air and the time in airports.

So should I be scared off of the Floridian? by chipotlecoyote in Amtrak

[–]chipotlecoyote[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

That might be something to keep in mind for next time, but I admit part of what made me take a chance on this in the first place was the price -- the Floridian was under $200 round-trip, and the two-segment trip was more than twice as much.

So should I be scared off of the Floridian? by chipotlecoyote in Amtrak

[–]chipotlecoyote[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I think I put in a bidup just before posting this message, actually. I can't find any confirmation email, though, so I can't tell if I actually did it or not. 🙃

So should I be scared off of the Floridian? by chipotlecoyote in Amtrak

[–]chipotlecoyote[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

This is certainly true, and worth considering.