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GNU is Not Unix Software Open Source

Emacs 26.1 Released With New Features (lwn.net) 116

Posted by EditorDavid from the church-of-Emacs dept.
There's a new version of the 42-year-old libre text editor with over 2,000 built-in commands, reports LWN.net: Highlights include a built-in Lisp threading mechanism that provides some concurrency, double buffering when running under X, a redesigned flymake mode, 24-bit color support in text mode, and a systemd [user] unit file.
The Free Software Foundation has released a 10,653-word description of all the new features in Emacs 26.1. Here's a couple more:
  • The Emacs server now has socket-launching support. This allows socket based activation, where an external process like systemd can invoke the Emacs server process upon a socket connection event and hand the socket over to Emacs... This new functionality can be disabled with the configure option '--disable-libsystemd'.
  • The new function 'call-shell-region' executes a command in an inferior shell with the buffer region as input.
  • Intercepting hotkeys on Windows 7 and later now works better.
  • The new user variable 'electric-quote-chars' provides a list of curved quotes for 'electric-quote-mode', allowing user to choose the types of quotes to be used.

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Emacs 26.1 Released With New Features More

Emacs 26.1 Released With New Features

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  • Skynet option now on by default (Score:5, Funny)

    by goombah99 ( 560566 ) on Saturday June 02, 2018 @10:40AM (#56715520)

    hit ctrl-x SK option-N to toggle it off.

    it's just like in the movie, except it talks with a LISP.

    • As long as it does not stutter like in the old days with TTY terminals itâ(TM)s Ok

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        The new user variable âelectric-quote-charsâ(TM) provides a list of curved quotes for âelectric-quote-modeâ(TM), allowing user to choose the types of quotes to be used.

  • inetd (Score:5, Insightful)

    by phantomfive ( 622387 ) on Saturday June 02, 2018 @10:43AM (#56715532) Journal
    Once upon a time, there was a service called inet.d. With inetd it was super easy to write internet activated programs, with almost no extra effort. Service after service got added to inetd, because it was so easy.

    Then one day, someone realized that inetd was a security risk. Not that it was inherently insecure, but that it was in fact harder than you would expect to write an inetd service that was secure, so there were a lot of security holes. As the knowledge of this spread, service after service got removed from inetd, and now on most Unix systems, it's not running at all.

    There's a George Santayana quote in here somewhere. But what is it?

  • Not enough features to be useful (Score:5, Funny)

    by MetricT ( 128876 ) on Saturday June 02, 2018 @10:50AM (#56715572)

    I'm afraid I can't be bothered to switch to Emacs until it has a hypervisor, 3d rendering engine, distributed filesystem, and GPU-powered machine learning framework. Guess I'll stick with nano for a while longer...

  • There is probably a drinking game to be invited here. For every 50 unique emacs command you call out before a foe they need to take a shot

    • Yeah but if you want to print it on a sheet you need a 0.1 pt font. And a sheet as large as your house.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by doom ( 14564 )

      There is probably a drinking game to be invited here. For every 50 unique emacs command you call out before a foe they need to take a shot

      But you'd be allowed to invent new ones on the fly. No one who knows the syntax for "defun" would ever lose.

  • Finally, a Highlander sequel I want to watch! (Score:5, Funny)

    by fahrbot-bot ( 874524 ) on Saturday June 02, 2018 @11:01AM (#56715622)

    ... external process like systemd can invoke the Emacs server process ...

    Let Emacs and SystemD duke it out for a while -- There can only be ONE [wikipedia.org]!

    [ We're all rooting for -- and counting on -- you Emacs to vanquish The Kurgan. ]

  • I'm a bit of an Emacs fan. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Qbertino ( 265505 ) <moiraNO@SPAMmodparlor.com> on Saturday June 02, 2018 @11:03AM (#56715632)

    I find it amazing to have a piece of software that is 42 years old and still in active development. And usage. Think of it: Emacs invented the clipboard. And even though it recently has been beaten by other free editors in performance for larger files I do expect Emacs to take the crown again in upcoming versions.

    I always use Emacs in CLI mode which is where it belongs IMHO.

    Here's to another great 42 years!

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      I tried to use it. But when you have a project to do and then have to learn a very complicated piece of software with its own language on top of that, it's overwhelming. I needed to figure out how to get my project done, not learn all the commands to do things that are just a mouse click on other development environments.

      And now they added 20 pages of descriptions for new features.

      Not for me.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by phantomfive ( 622387 )

        not learn all the commands to do things that are just a mouse click on other development environments.

        This is a troll, but in case anyone else is wondering, all the basic commands are available in a regular menu in modern emacs. You can learn the basic hot keys as you go, just like any environment. And if you want to, you can learn the more advanced commands. But you don't have to.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by HiThere ( 15173 )

          Well, it's been awhile since I tried to use EMACS, but at the time I quit before learning it well because the three finger key commands were actively painful. Since then my hands have become a bit less flexible, and now even things like control commands cause me to need to use both hands. (The shift key is typically much more favorably placed.) So I think EMACS is not an option.

          • Re: (Score:3)

            by hawk ( 1151 )

            I actually needed up with medical treatment from EMACS . . . I was using a full-sized CKIE keyboard[1], meaning my (large) left hand had to rotate to reach the control key.

            After a few days of all-day, heavy editing, I strained the muscle in my let pinkie . . .

            hawk, who for some reason now usually sticks to vi . . .

            [1] Control Key In Exile, as opposed to next to the A where God Meant it to be . . .

          • I replace capslock with control. which is how God intended the keyboard to be laid out. It's very simple to use control sequences that way, as long as you have a pinky finger.

      • Re:I'm a MICRO-emacs fan (Score:3, Interesting)

        by shoor ( 33382 )

        I was first exposed to emacs at my job back in the 1980s, running on some kind of Vax, and it slowed the damn machine down, so I used vi instead, like everybody else. Then I got an Atari 520 ST. It had a minimal word processor, but no good text editor. So I downloaded micro-emacs off usenet from one of the alt-binary newsgroups. It was encoded into an ascii format using uuencode and you got the binary back using uudecode. (That's how things were done in the 80s). Anyway, it worked great! I use emacs n

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jythie ( 914043 )
        Oddly enough, I never get around to learning graphical IDEs for the same reason. I have work to do and already know how to do it in Vi.

        • Same here, I have work to do, and every IDE I've tried except the first(*) slowed me down either by design, or silly ergonomics, or bugs.

          (*) UCSD Pascal was an IDE before the PC was introduced.

    • at work, we use a lot of python and for some reason, the editor 'pycharm' has a large following. personally, I don't get it - I'm an emacs user from the 1980's onward. I don't need an IDE to get work done, but the young guys in my group all seem to insist on it.

      problem is, it keeps crashing on various linux distros and the project is somewhat closed source. the x-server crashes when people use pycharm. while x11 should pretty much *never* crash these days, I wonder what this app is doing to aggrivate it

      • Emacs is an IDE, so what exactly is your point?

        If Emacs had by default sane key bindings more people would use it. But as it is a mainly unix utility, potential users go with the mantra: don't change key bindings, because if you have to log on on a "foreign" system the bindings will be different. Hence the pros stick to "editors" that are simpler, guarantied to be installed by default, and have memorizable key bindings.

        I'm 50, and I don't use Emacs, tried it when I was 21, switched to vi(m), never looked ba

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by doom ( 14564 )

          ... switched to vi(m), never looked back.

          And never adopted any new cliches, either.

          angel-o-sphere is anti-emacs: what other endorsement do you need?

          • I'm not anti emacs, it is just not worth _my_ time to learn the shortcuts :D
            I never suggested an particular editor to anyone ...

            My point is: as a system admin, you need to learn a subset of vi anyway, as I pointed out, you might need to log on to a system that has no Emacs installed.

      • I don't need an IDE to get work done, but the young guys in my group all seem to insist on it.

        One of the hardcore programmers I know used vi/m for a long time, but eventually had to move to a graphical IDE for Java development because of the inline API + arguments completion/documentation. I suspect he was working with a lot of APIs over multiple projects and didn't have them all memorized.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by doom ( 14564 )
      Please: the emacs kill-ring works far better than the Mac-style "clipboards" -- you can store multiple things in the kill-ring, and pop them off of the stack in sequence (kind of like an *actual* clipboard, to echo one of Ted Nelson's complaints about the Mac-- I mean a clipboard with a really tiny clip that only holds one page? That's good old elegant Zen-master Jobs for you... )

    • Think of it: Emacs invented the clipboard

      I wish other editors (any other editors) would take the trouble to copy the aspects of Emacs that are still vastly better all these many years later, so much so to the point where I still leave any IDE from time to time to do editing in Emacs...

      For clipboards, I can copy fragments into named buffers and take them out again super easily, so I can have several different text fragments stored away for easy recall later.

      That turns out to be super handy in combination wit

    • TFS is clueless. GNUmacs was released 33 years ago, not 42.

      Before then we had the original TECO/PDP-10 EMACS, Gosling's EMACS (first on Unix), Unipress EMACS (I still use keybindings from gosmacs/unipress), microemacs / mg, JOVE, Epsilon, even MINCE which hopefully none of you suffered with.

  • Yes I know, Vi has been in emacs for decades...

  • baby steps (Score:4, Funny)

    by xaosflux ( 917784 ) on Saturday June 02, 2018 @11:24AM (#56715708) Homepage

    emacs is "a great operating system, lacking only a decent editor"

    • I heard people run it under this other operating system called "systemd", and that only has one issue of having a shitty init system

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by amorsen ( 7485 )

      M-x viper-mode

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by doom ( 14564 )

      sudo apt-cache update
      sudo apt-get install humor

    • emacs is "a great operating system, lacking only a decent editor"

      And they still haven't patched the Spectre v3a exploits. I'll stick with Linux until they can keep up to date.

  • As you may know, a year ago, scientists discovered an incredible event, a miracle really; the very first ever observed gravity waves! Produced by the incredible force of two neutron stars colliding, the collision is theorized to have produced a black hole, sucking everything nearby them into a deep spiraling abyss of mind bending complexity that has yet to be understood by any human.

    Well ladies and gentleman, I am here to tell you that report was in error. Scientists have now confirmed it was merely the co

    • Unstoppable force (systemd) meets immovable object (emacs)
    • The battle of the operating systems
    • Iron Programmer--Whose software reigns supreme

    Will systemd extinguish emacs when an editor is implemented or will emacs kill systemd by adding an init feature? Which one will evolve into an operating system first?

  • Another test for General Relativity (Score:3)

    by Waffle Iron ( 339739 ) on Saturday June 02, 2018 @02:18PM (#56716408)

    When two heavyweight objects like Emacs and systemd merge in this manner, we should be able to detect the resulting gravitational waves. Expecting to see results soon from LIGO.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      When the systemd/emacs merge took place the detector spat out a really weird stream of text none of us gray-beards could decipher. We figured line-noise was the culprit. Then in hobbled a white beard. He took one look and screamed " Nooooooooo not Teco"

  • Have they added a text editing function? I could really use a new editor.

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