Vlog: Emacs is my "favourite Emacs package"

[@mnazaal]

This channel is one of those truly exceptional and underrated ones you would lucky if the KZbin algorithm blessed you with it

[@protesilaos]

Thanks for watching! I only post my videos here and on my website, but do not promote them elsewhere. My goal is to grow organically as an Emacs user and chronicle my progress. Popularity does not matter in that regard.

[@jochenburkhard9132]

In that crowded space about what is the unique value proposition of Emacs, your video addresses it the best way possible. Thank you - again - for your invaluable work, Prot.

[@protesilaos]

You are welcome! Much appreciated.

[@burakbey21]

Your content is exceptional. Crisp, concise and extremely informative.

[@protesilaos]

Thank you!

[@hxlr666]

I recently took the emacs principle to the next level by means of EXWM, never looking back. Great video.

[@protesilaos]

That's the spirit! I still have not managed to find time for EXWM, but it is on my radar.

[@AndersJackson]

I am looking into using EXWM, so any recommendations for a beginner to look at and avoid?

[@hxlr666]

@@AndersJackson If you're already familiar with emacs you're ready to make the switch for the most part, just check the documentation of EXWM, it is of great help. As an advice, try to minimize the number of system tray apps you load at startup, gui notifications can seriously hang emacs execution for some reason (probably related to emacs being single threaded), I have to disable them to be able to work at all. Also, java GUI apps don't work out of the box, you have to export an environment variable to fix that. I also found useful, for the transition, to use a session manger such as sddm, so I can have at the same time my EXWM session along with a KDE plasma session (with the same user) so I can switch back and forth in case of an issue (and I also needed because I usally share my computer). I hope this information is useful to you

[@marciomaiajr]

Moved from vim to emacs after a car accident. I suffered a retinal detachment and after that I coudnt stand the terminal font for more than 5 minutes without eye strain so I had to find an graphical text editor with big and bold fonts. I'm glad I found emacs. It's awesome.

[@protesilaos]

Thanks for sharing! What do you think helped you the most? Perhaps some particular package or configuration?

[@amaxamon]

Amen! My operating system is a back end for Emacs!

[@protesilaos]

That's the spirit!

[@johnhammer8668]

I love this philosophy dude, totally new view points. Make me wonder why this never occurred to me. Pretty interesting. Thanks Protesilaos bro

[@protesilaos]

You are welcome and thanks for watching!

[@hopeunome]

Thanks for making all these videos on Emacs. I like your content and things of that nature ;)

[@protesilaos]

You are welcome! And thanks for watching!

[@arthurcgusmao]

Couldn't agree more, thank you for sharing your top-quality philosophy and systems-thinking perspective with the Emacs community!

[@protesilaos]

You are welcome and thanks for watching!

[@sujeewa8067]

Just subscribed after the emacs conference

[@DangerSepp]

Thank you for your continuous, highly informative content!

[@protesilaos]

You are welcome!

[@yoshikhurazi1769]

Another top notch post. I have a video request: I want to use Emacs for academic writing (especially now that I've figured out how to wrangle pandoc into converted my plain text output into the garbage MS Office formats that my university insists upon. However, I am having a headache trying to make sense of the different packages for citations and was wondering what your workflow is like with regards to this. Thanks a million! For reference: I'm using org-roam and also have zotero installed with the "Better Bibtex" extension to allow me to grab anything I see on my web browser and automatically update it in a master .bib file on the same root directory as all my org notes.

[@protesilaos]

Thank you! With regard to your request, I do not have experience in that area and have not used any of the relevant tools.

[@craigdanielmaceacher]

These are the reasons I’m now on Emacs after a decade with Vim and a flirt with Kakoune, which is sort of like Vim but very stripped down and relies on being just an editor tool within the UNIX IDE that you must construct yourself. To me it was a ideal that never really delivered, each application had its own quirks and or DSL/configuration files and I was missing the glue to bind it all together. Emacs is this glue for me now: it does one thing and one thing well, and that is being an excellent text editing platform!

[@protesilaos]

Nicely put! Thanks for sharing.

[@hackerzol]

When you said "this presentation would not be possible without..." I thought for sure you were getting ready to go into a NordVPN ad or something, lol. Anyway, another great video Prot, keep them coming, I enjoy them very much.

[@protesilaos]

Thank you! I don't think I will ever do that type of promotion: no worries.

[@mymacaintwag]

THIS is awesome I have a suggestion: talk about the time investment into emacs

[@protesilaos]

This is a good idea for another video blog. Thanks!

[@alexandroskourtis5268]

out of curiosity, what did you study at university?

[@protesilaos]

A bachelor's degree in European politics, economics, and law (though I always read a lot outside the curriculum). When I switched to free software about four years ago I had no knowledge of programming. And I never was a computer-savvy person. Reading manpages, experimenting with shell scripts, etc. did help a lot. Emacs fits in perfectly with what I was doing before I discovered it last summer: my first impression of it was "of course, this is what I was always doing!". So here we are.

[@alexandroskourtis5268]

@@protesilaos and you went from non computer savvy to this? in four years? nice.... i get that its not a race but still very impressive!! also, it would be interesting to hear from you more economics/politics related videos.... :))

[@protesilaos]

I do write about politics on my website. There are some articles in greek as well. While I do like politics intellectually, I am a bad fit for the actual world of politics: my type of personality is the furthest it gets from the kind of person you find in that space.

[@alexandroskourtis5268]

@@protesilaos I know exactly what you mean. If I remember correctly I have read some of your articles....

[@reverseila4363]

Why do you introduce yourself at the beginning?

[@protesilaos]

Just a way to be friendly. It also helps when people wish to email me or who wonder how my name is pronounced.

[@reverseila4363]

@@protesilaos got it.