Emacs Related Essays

This page are some misc essays elated to emacs and lisp.

Technical

• Emergency vi (5 min tutorial on vi)
• Xah Lee's Emacs Customization File (my “.emacs”)
• The Confusion of Emacs's Keystroke Representation (explains the notations “C-q C-j”, “\n”, “^J”, “RET” etc.)
• Mac OS X Keybinding and Unicode Tips (system-wide keybinding for OS X)

Text Editing and code formatting related topics.

• A Text Editor Feature: Syntax Tree Walking (describes a grammar aware highlighting)
• A Simple Lisp Code Formatter (describes the need for a lisp code reformatter)
• Tabs vs Spaces in Source Code (opinion on Tabs vs Space in source code formatting)
• The Harm of hard-wrapping Lines (opinion on hard-wrapped lines)

Keyboarding

• How To Avoid The Emacs Pinky Problem (advise on using Control key with emacs)
• A Review of Microsoft Natural Keyboards
• Computer Keyboards Gallery (photos and commentaries on keyboards design, efficiency, ergonomics)

Social

• A Record of Frustration in IT Industry (rant on FSF's disappearing doc urls)
• My Experience of Emacs vs Xemacs
• Modernization of Emacs (suggestion on items emacs should adapt)
• Text Editors Popularity (ranking editor popularity and the importance of market research)
• Text Processing: Emacs Lisp vs Perl (How Perl's Lies Damaged the Computing Community)

Lisp

• LISP Logo (artwork)
• The Lambda Logo Tour (artwork gallery; commentary)
• Lisp Needs A Logo (illustrated essay)
• Why Learn Lisp When There Are Perl And Python (essay; opinion)
• Lispers and Wikipedia (essay)

• Modernization of Emacs Lisp (essay)
• Jargons And High Level Languages (unpolished essay)
• The Jargon “Lisp1” vs “Lisp2” (essay)
• Lisp's List Problem (essay)
• Is Lisp's Objects Concept Necessary? (essay)
• My First Encounter And Impression Of Lisp (essay)

Ban on Freenode

I'm banned on Freenode↗'s irc emacs channel since about 2006-10, and the ban was never lifted as of 2007-12-22. The ban is primarily, and single-handedly executed by John Sullivan (aka johnsu01).

I started to use freenode's irc emacs channel in about 2005-12. I was banned in that channel on and off before 2006-10, and the reguglars on that channel discussed the issue on a emacs wiki (emacswiki.org). But few months after the permanent ban by John Sullivan, the entire page is removed. I have saved it, and the complete saved page, unedited, is here: Kickban Xah Lee From Emacs Channel.

I was also ban'd in freenode's lisp channel a few times. See: Ignorance And Intolerance In Online Computing Communities.

Page created: 2007-11.
© 2005 by Xah Lee.