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1)First, ESS, Emacs speaks statistics, found at http://ess.r-project.org/ . This lets you interface interactively with R, SAS, Stata, etc., all from the common Emacs interface. As a statistician, it's the one piece of software I could not do very well without!

2) The 'ido' package, with flex matching, in my .emacs,

(require 'ido)
(ido-mode t)
(setq ido-enable-flex-matching t)

This lets you open files and switch buffers with fuzzy matching, really nice when you have lots of things open.

See: http://www.emacsblog.org/2008/05/19/giving-ido-mode-a-second-chance/

3) Make the mouse jump away when you type over it.
(mouse-avoidance-mode 'cat-and-mouse)

4) Open two windows side-by-side (C-x 3) one with LaTeX code, one with a pdf, then use this in your .emacs, (add-hook 'doc-view-mode-hook 'auto-revert-mode), when you compile the .tex file into PDF, the PDF automatically updates in Emacs, I used that a lot while working on my CV.

5) The thunderbird extension that lets me compose replies in Emacs using emacsclient.

6) org-mode http://www.org-mode.org/

7) preview-latex, now part of AUCTeX, this lets you see preview versions of formulae and graphics inline in your .text file, *while you edit*. Your formula is replaced by what it will look like when compiled.

8) EmacsWiki: http://www.emacswiki.org/

M-x doctor always did it for me.

Unless you are coding in something like vi or emacs, I don't use the command line for my source control. IDE Integration means a lot...

I thought that with Emacs I was using IDE source control integration.

Unless you are coding in something like vi or emacs, I don't use the command line for my source control. IDE Integration means a lot...

I thought that with Emacs I was using IDE source control integration.

Unless you are coding in something like vi or emacs, I don't use the command line for my source control. IDE Integration means a lot...

I thought that with Emacs I was using IDE source control integration.

Unless you are coding in something like vi or emacs, I don't use the command line for my source control. IDE Integration means a lot...

I thought that with Emacs I was using IDE source control integration.

Unless you are coding in something like vi or emacs, I don't use the command line for my source control. IDE Integration means a lot...

I thought that with Emacs I was using IDE source control integration.

Eclipse (Emonic) is my preference, but Emacs (csharp-mode) also works surprisingly well.

Some time ago I used Aquamacs for a while, although nowadays I use standard Emacs again, but I know that I had no trouble having my own color scheme, which happened to be similar to Zenburn, working fine in it, so your post made me curious about what could be the issue.

The first problem is that Zenburn requires Color-theme, which is not included by default. Since you don't give details about what doesn't work, I'm not sure whether you are already past this point.

Anyway, this is what I did to try it out:

cd /tmp
wget http://www.brockman.se/software/zenburn/zenburn.el
wget http://download.gna.org/color-theme/color-theme.el.gz
gunzip color-theme.el.gz

Now you need to load them in your ".emacs" or equivalent: Aquamacs' recommended file is "~/Library/Preferences/Aquamacs Emacs/Preferences.el":

(setq load-path (cons "/tmp" load-path))
(require 'color-theme)
(require 'zenburn)
;;(color-theme-initialize)
(setq color-theme-is-global t)
(color-theme-zenburn)

There seems to be some bug somewhere, because the recommended "(color-theme-initialize)" does not work, as noted in the Emacs Wiki page about Color-theme. However, if instead of setting the load path and using require I load the files directly, the initialization is not needed:

(load "/tmp/color-theme.el")
(load "/tmp/zenburn.el")
(color-theme-zenburn)

Actually, it seems that you do not need any specific steps for making it work with Aquamacs, but rather that the documentation in "zenburn.el" and "color-theme.el" is atrociously incomplete. Additionally, the web page for Color-theme does not work, which is why I linked to the Emacs Wiki page instead.

I still get some weird error about "aquamacs-customization-version-id", but I have other things to do. You can work on your own from here.

Some time ago I used Aquamacs for a while, although nowadays I use standard Emacs again, but I know that I had no trouble having my own color scheme, which happened to be similar to Zenburn, working fine in it, so your post made me curious about what could be the issue.

The first problem is that Zenburn requires Color-theme, which is not included by default. Since you don't give details about what doesn't work, I'm not sure whether you are already past this point.

Anyway, this is what I did to try it out:

cd /tmp
wget http://www.brockman.se/software/zenburn/zenburn.el
wget http://download.gna.org/color-theme/color-theme.el.gz
gunzip color-theme.el.gz

Now you need to load them in your ".emacs" or equivalent: Aquamacs' recommended file is "~/Library/Preferences/Aquamacs Emacs/Preferences.el":

(setq load-path (cons "/tmp" load-path))
(require 'color-theme)
(require 'zenburn)
;;(color-theme-initialize)
(setq color-theme-is-global t)
(color-theme-zenburn)

There seems to be some bug somewhere, because the recommended "(color-theme-initialize)" does not work, as noted in the Emacs Wiki page about Color-theme. However, if instead of setting the load path and using require I load the files directly, the initialization is not needed:

(load "/tmp/color-theme.el")
(load "/tmp/zenburn.el")
(color-theme-zenburn)

Actually, it seems that you do not need any specific steps for making it work with Aquamacs, but rather that the documentation in "zenburn.el" and "color-theme.el" is atrociously incomplete. Additionally, the web page for Color-theme does not work, which is why I linked to the Emacs Wiki page instead.

I still get some weird error about "aquamacs-customization-version-id", but I have other things to do. You can work on your own from here.

http://www.emacswiki.org/cgi-bin/wiki/GnuScreen

Also, w3m runs nicely as an inferior process under emacs.
http://www.emacswiki.org/cgi-bin/wiki/emacs-w3m#WThreeM

Emacs can display photos just fine.
http://emacswiki.org/cgi-bin/wiki/Tumme

More likely
http://www.emacswiki.org/cgi-bin/wiki/StefanMonnier
and, with this post, I achieve some sort of dubious /. goal of having posted 24 comments to a single front page article.
Can't tell whether to be happy or do something unspeakable...

And there's a good VIM emulator as well in vimpulse. It supports visual mode too the lack of which was a show-stopper for me when I first tried viper.

ever tried to get line numbers on that thing?

Yeah, emacs.
The proponents of this >80 nonsense AreProbablyTheSameOnesTellingYouThatCamelCaseIsRea llyTheWayToGoEvenThoughItLeadsToSomeRidiculousCode .
http://www.emacswiki.org/cgi-bin/wiki/EightyColumn Rule

You most likely meant http://www.emacswiki.org/.

No, you can't open it in your text editor...

Ah, emacs. http://www.emacswiki.org/cgi-bin/wiki/sql.el
Okay, maybe that's not quite what you meant, but it's close.

So amazingly, this young whippersnapper has a feature that both these mature editors are taking "a quick stab at" and "attempt to emulate."

I frigging love TextMate. I love the directory browsing "project" system, I love the fact that it's dead simple to create custom macros/commands (using bash/python/ruby/perl!), and I love its snippets features.

However. It's not cheap, not cross-platform, and the "Emacs-like keybindings" are just bastardized enough to drive me up the wall. So I'm sticking with Emacs for now.

For anyone interested, here are some quick ways to modify the One True Editor to behave a bit more like TextMate:

Directory browsing of projects: Try Emacs Code Browser.
Snippets: Check out msf-abbrev. You'll be able to specify cursor location, fields, etc. similar to TextMate. I've also heard good things about Skeleton Mode).
Macros: Try the Power Macros package.
Quick(er) buffer-switching: The ido.el package works wonders for me. Note: If you're used to running dired from find-file, you'll want to set ido-show-dot-for-dired to t in your .emacs.

This is a good point. If a program is released as free software and the source is extensive and hard to read, then it's possible but very costly for users to modify it. For most people, making a change will involve either (a) getting someone on the original development team to make the change or (b) hiring programmers who weren't on the original development team to spend a lot of time studying the code. If you don't have either a lot of money or a lot of time and programming skill, then the original developers of the program effectively have a monopoly on improvement of the code. So much for Stallman's Freedom Three.

Contrast GNU Emacs. It's designed to be easily modified. There is a tutorial available on how to modify Emacs. There is also a wiki for people to share modifications of Emacs without asking the developers to add the changes to an official release.

If free software developers are seriously concerned about their users' ability to modify the code, they should think carefully about how to do this when developing the programs (e.g., documenting the code, using Guile or another extension language).

http://www.emacswiki.org/cgi-bin/wiki/EmacsAndXEma cs

If you want to see the source file in emacs that generated that, check out the muse source for my site. Keep in mind that when using it in Emacs, the markup doesn't actually appear - it is converted to the proper fonts on-the-fly in Emacs.

In this context, the use of htmlize is perfect for generating an HTML form of your code buffer from emacs. Whatever your color scheme, htmlize will pick up the colors and use them to generate the HTML. If you're not publishing an entire page, I suggest you set htmlize to use the "font" method for generating html that can be used without corresponding matching CSS. If you use Emacs color-theme package, the theme "BlippBlopp" produces good results for publishing on the web.

The only thing this system lack that I care about is comments, but since no one reads my blog, its not that big of an issue. I installed SimpleMachine's SMF for blog comments and other forum needs. Vanilla may also be a good choice.

Finally, it's worth mentioning that I can then edit my site from anywhere via Tramp mode in Emacs, which allows seamless file editting on remote servers over SSH. This way, I can edit my site from my laptop on the road, or my deskktop at home without worrying about having the code with me. Muse will then publish remotely as well (though there seems to be a bug with RSS generation and Tramp that I need to work out).

If you want to see the source file in emacs that generated that, check out the muse source for my site. Keep in mind that when using it in Emacs, the markup doesn't actually appear - it is converted to the proper fonts on-the-fly in Emacs.

In this context, the use of htmlize is perfect for generating an HTML form of your code buffer from emacs. Whatever your color scheme, htmlize will pick up the colors and use them to generate the HTML. If you're not publishing an entire page, I suggest you set htmlize to use the "font" method for generating html that can be used without corresponding matching CSS. If you use Emacs color-theme package, the theme "BlippBlopp" produces good results for publishing on the web.

The only thing this system lack that I care about is comments, but since no one reads my blog, its not that big of an issue. I installed SimpleMachine's SMF for blog comments and other forum needs. Vanilla may also be a good choice.

Finally, it's worth mentioning that I can then edit my site from anywhere via Tramp mode in Emacs, which allows seamless file editting on remote servers over SSH. This way, I can edit my site from my laptop on the road, or my deskktop at home without worrying about having the code with me. Muse will then publish remotely as well (though there seems to be a bug with RSS generation and Tramp that I need to work out).

Emacs: M-x flyspell-prog-mode

"Programmers can use flyspell-prog-mode to enable spell checking only within comments of source code."
http://www.emacswiki.org/cgi-bin/wiki/FlySpell

I finally found it at EmacsWiki.

The article didn't make the point I thought it was going to make, given the title of the post. I thought the article was going to argue that free software needs to be easy to modify in order for it to be truly free.

One of the primary purposes of making software free (as in speech) is to make it possible for users of the software to examine the code and make changes to it. This is nominally possible with all software released under free software licenses, but some pieces of free software are easier to modify than others.

Consider GNU Emacs (or XEmacs). It's designed to be easy for users to modify it. Indeed, it was written in Emacs Lisp partly to make it easier for users to modify it. There is a tutorial to help new Emacs users learn how to write Emacs lisp. There are also websites people use to share their Emacs extensions and to talk about writing Emacs lisp code.

Or take Firefox. Mozilla has set up a website for people to share their Firefox extensions. Mozilla also provides a tutorial explaining how to start writing your own extensions. You don't need to study hundreds of kilobytes of code before you can start writing simple extensions to Firefox or to Emacs.

Isn't a free software project a better free software project if the software is designed in a way that makes extensions easy to write? Or if the developers provide a guide for people who want to write their own extensions? Or if there are wikis or mailing lists for discussion among people who aren't members of the development team but want to tweak the code?

I'm constantly discovering new features in emacs which I'd never even thought of before. If you were just using it as a glorified Notepad, then you weren't using it to its full potential--not nearly.

That being said, does anyone know how to do in Emacs what is effectively the same as doing a ``set list'' in vi?

I use BitlBee in rcirc. All the protocols you mention, plus IRC, ICQ, Jabber and Yahoo, all from a unified interface within the comfort of Emacs. BitlBee also works with your IRC client of choice, of course.

It doesn't get much easier than that.

No, actually, I know about Croquet. And I've run Squeak.

My memory tells me though, you can't work on source-code in real-time with others on Croquet, though. They don't have a gobby, they don't have a real-time voice system. They don't have all these things that people need.

It's a great system though, and it's great inspiration for the kinds of things we will do in the future.

BTW, the present existance of a thing doesn't mean we've entered a "new world" yet. I'll call it the "new world" when most everybody I know, and hoards I don't, are involved in that environment. The world wide web is a "new world" in this respect, compared to the past.

Earnestly, I don't understand the biting criticism to my post. I think it's just applied misanthropy. i.e.: "Oh God, bloggers are the sux0rs." What they don't realize is that they themselves are bloggers, whether they do it online, or whether they do it offline by just posting updates to their friends. In which case it's worse than general mis-anthropy, it's just general self-hatred. Not a good thing.

Welcome to 2015.

You log onto the Internet. (Ha, ha! Scratch that.) You're on the Internet, as always. All cities are wired all the time, and there's hardly a device that doesn't speak with the net. Today's cell phones are as laughable as 9600 baud modems are today. New cell phones are capable of creating 3D models and textures from items- it's the most popular way of "uploading" physical artifacts into the 3D virtual world.

You have a moment, and are interested in seeing what your friends are up to. Vinnie's browsing the web, researching some papers on post-modern something-or-other. Minipi is reading a paper for his information architecture classes. Mattis in Germany is looking at some music band sites. You can see them transparently live, even though they are all over the planet.

You go up to the music band sites and see that not just Mattis is working on it, but others are as well. You strike up a conversation with Mattis about the music. (With your voice.) The other people nearby may listen in, they may not- they may instead opt to just read the speech-to-text'ed transcript which passively rolls by in the background.

Joel wants to know how I'm doing, he goes checks it out. He sees me talking with Mattis; He's not particularly interested in the conversation, so he won't butt in or knock on the door; Instead, he just slips me an instant message letting me know he's nearby. Mattis notices my pause, and sees that I've received a note. "Oh, sorry, Mattis, something really important just came up." I talk with Joel.

Joel is working on a paper, and I see where it is, mid-writing. He's working on it with another fellow, in real-time. He needs some expertise of mine for this particular part; Something important to me, and that he knew that, and wants my input on it. I read it over, make some edits. "Hmm," his friend says, and proposes some other changes. We talk about it. We notice that there are 5 shadow people, watching as we right. Some people are very interested in Joel's thoughts; They're having a conversation about what he's writing on the permiter.

The basic idea here is that we're going to enter the "World Live Web." It turns out that it's rather useful to see and be seen. There are tremendous things that are possible by networking people, and that means live interaction. Deferring communications all the time is interesting, but has some problems, especially in terms of mass organizing. One thing we will see are regularly scheduled "time windows." It'll be a temporal hangout. Like a meeting or appointment, but not necessarily as formal.

Now, if you want to play "invisible" and be a voyeur, then fine. If you don't want people to see you while you're writing, be my guest. You can be one of "the invisible people."

But a lot of us, we're going to participate in this new world.

Will the voter notice? I don't think so. If I were hacking the election machine, I would make the paper ballot match whatever the voter put it.

As for the paper tally, I don't think there will be one. If there were any in the previous elections, I am not at all aware of them. The reason people want to do electronic voting, is so that they don't have to perform a paper tally.

Is it far fetched? "As if someone is going to be able to insert code into the GCC compiler?" No, I'm afraid it is not far fetched. Just think about the amount of money that goes into election campaigns. A mere $1,000,000 is way more than enough to subvert the electronic system.

You asked me, if I think it's worth it to people to rig the vote by hacking a compiler and making sure that it is the compiler that is used (not hard!): How does it compare to the ease of replacing paper ballots? Or just throwing them away?

And here's where we get to the solution that I propose: Video tape all handling of ballots, and the counting of ballots. It is now easy to record all ballot access, and place those records on the Internet. People should always access ballots in full view of both cameras, and members of parties, and whoever else wants to be an observer. The observers can then verify the video records. ("Yes, that is really what happened. This is not a false video.") Etc., etc., etc.,. This is much harder to fake out.

No, it's not true that "no matter how you look at it, this system is better than paper."

Electronic voting is not as trustworthy, because we've seen demonstrations of just how easy it is to subvert these guys. You have not presented any reasons why the hack I linked to is not reasonable. This is a remarkably simple hack, and Ken Thompson described the basics of how to write it. It is not expensive, it is very easy to perform. All you need to know is how the compiler will be aquired. Somebody will have the authority to choose the compiler. All you need to do is to be that person, or to find out what that person will do, or to intercept the request to retrieve the compiler; There are many ways to put the bugged compiler in the right place.

You could even subvert the commands "mv," "cp", or have the operating system of the machine it's compiled on perform a well timed switch, when nobody's looking. There's a million ways to do this.

Do not mistake my criticism for luddite conservatism. You are speaking with a hardcore transhumanist programmer. I've been programming since I was 7, and I look forward to the day when I can detach my brain from my body, and load it into an electronic cube. That is until we have the technology to siliconize the brain. You can confirm that I think this way because I'm Internet bonded. I am totally into tech.

It just happens that, in this case, the best technology is called paper & pencil & video recorders broadcasting and archiving onto the Internet.

This is the one true emacs vi mode.

Also, I just found this:

http://www.emacswiki.org/cgi-bin/wiki/DumpingEmacs

Some useful bits in there if you want to give it a try.

However, when I just need to do some basic config file editing I use Jove which is a scaled down version of Emacs that has the same keys as Emacs but loads as quickly as vi.

Look into using emacsclient or gnuclient so you can load Emacs as quickly as vi without removing the features that make it Emacs.

However, when I just need to do some basic config file editing I use Jove which is a scaled down version of Emacs that has the same keys as Emacs but loads as quickly as vi.

Look into using emacsclient or gnuclient so you can load Emacs as quickly as vi without removing the features that make it Emacs.

What I'd like to find and or write is a good PHP/HTML mode for emacs, or even a CPAN/CTAN clone for emacs modes and scripts.

You might want to check this out: http://www.emacswiki.org/cgi-bin/wiki/HtmlModeDelu xe

Also, I've got a somewhat extensive file of html advice that loads whenever SGML mode runs in HTML mode. It provides advice functions for the HTML mode commands so that things work the way that I want. I'm lazy and don't like a lot of typing, so I have the advice scan the text and insert stuff where I think it ought to go, and not where HTML mode's author thought it should go. If I keep adding to it, I may just have my very own, complete, HTML mode.

On the Help menu there are two options that can help you find Emacs packages. The first is Find Emacs Packages and is bound by default to ^h-p. It will give you the hierarchal list of packages stored on your system. The other command, Find Extra Packages, opens an info page with information on a few Emacs code repositories and links to some extra packages.

Additionally, there's a news group (gnu.emacs.sources) where folks have traditionally posted their Emacs lisp code.

You are right, though, it would be nice to have something like CPAN/CTAN available straight from Emacs. A light bulb turns on over Panda's head.

So, according to the article, we will see this commercially around 2008-2010.

Justin Rattner tells us that in 2015, we should expect to see real-time super-resolution from cell cameras. That is, the ability to pick up several frames, and figure out more about the image, in real time, just based on the offsetting from holding a camera with a minute unconscious shake. (The problem is parallelizable, and 2015's x10-x100 core systems should take care of it.)

We already have the software to construct models & textures, after some rendering, from video footage.

If we could do real-time super-resolution in 2015, then it makes sense to me that, with some processing time, cell phone cameras in 2015 will render 3D-model textures and models. If the 4G network is around by then, (and it should be,) we could very well see instead that the data is sent to more powerful processing arrays elsewhere, (ie, on your home computers, or on Google's computers) and rendered into models in real-time. 4G is around 20Mb, perhaps 3G at 3Mb is enough to transmit low-grade video capture in real-time; Enough to make our 3D models in real time as well.

Presently, the OCR cameras require some rendering time. That requirement will clearly be gone by 2015; The cameras will automatically OCR text that is identified on-screen. (Perhaps the alarm will be a constant chirping buzz, whenever you use it?)

As a side note: Perhaps Google maps of the future will learn about what street names go to what streets, simply by recognizing and reading the sign posts.

What do you want to bet Google's going to get video footage of every city, and crank it into full-on 3D models? You better believe it. I'm betting on 2015, tops. (Who knows; I wouldn't be shocked if they weren't cranking on their Seattle footage now.)

We should also expect, I think, that the public will assemble it's own models from public footage. Volunteers will capture footage with their cell phones (or, if they are showing off, sophisticated digital video recordsers,) and feed it to a public free culture grid, which will churn out 3D models and textures for distribution and retrieval.

Is there a flaw in my reasoning? Are these outlandish thoughts for 2015? No! You can't have your Flying Car! Down boy! Retrain your imagination! Yes, people have predicted the future before; read about NISTEP's 1970's predictions for 1990-2000.

In the spirit of the endless text editor wars, may I recommend the emacs planner mode? But seriously, if your personal choice of text editor is emacs, then this really is the major mode worth looking into for keeping up with your tasks.

Yeah, I don't have an answer for you; The things you just said are beyond my comprehension.

I'll take these things you are saying back on over to the people I know and trust, and see what they have to say in response.

Passages of perspective.

The future's indeed being rebooted; It's just not what people imagined.

"you just don't get it." ... "luckily you are in a minority".

hmm, sounds like a programmer just lost the "it" that he acuses other of not getting. here, the "it" is access to source code and wherewithal to munge it to be most useful. when a programmer of such software says "our way is better" to a user, he challenges the user to become (or ally with) another programmer to fork the project. maybe that's what is desired, but the smoother way would be to separate mechanism and policy, concentrate your programming-fu on the mechanism and let the users twiddle the policy bits as they see fit.

happy users means less pressure to fork. of course, those who live by the fork you may wish to die by it, as well, for completeness or symmetry or whatever. that's fine, too.

There's a list of collaborative real-time document editors at WikiPedia:Collaborative_real-time_editor One of them is Gobby, which is multi-platform and free software. But you want version control, too; so I guess that would be a wiki which support real-time simultaineous editing. Some of the wikis have been talking about this (example), but I don't know if it's been implemented yet. I believe one project along those lines is the Yarrr extension to MediaWiki.

When I'm in from of the CRT I use the wonderful PlannerMode for Emacs to keep track of my day. I work on a lot of stuff on a day-to-day basis, so it makes sense to have a planner based on lots of individual day pages, and tasks that are linked to both a particular day page as well as to another page highlighting the task's usefulness to a particular plan. I also have it integrated to my ~/diary so it could show dates marked on my Emacs calendar, allowing me as well to procrastinate important tasks to be done in convenient time. Avoiding missing deadlines is easy, since PlannerMode also allows me to tag tasks with deadlines, so I have tasks that have me really do stuff while another set for actually clearing the deadline. And, as a side effect of PlannerMode being essentially an extension of EmacsWikiMode, I can publish my plans as a wiki (with RSS even ;) that I use as content for my site, allowing people who I work with to know what I'm up to as well. :)

Now, when I'm not, I use the Hipster PDA. I'm still green using it, but so far, it's great stuff, and I've been using it as my offline PlannerMode.

You may be asking: where's my {cellphone,PDA,laptop}? Answer: I have none of those, but if you're very generous and willing to give me either of the gadgets above, feel free to drop a mail. :D

When I'm in from of the CRT I use the wonderful PlannerMode for Emacs to keep track of my day. I work on a lot of stuff on a day-to-day basis, so it makes sense to have a planner based on lots of individual day pages, and tasks that are linked to both a particular day page as well as to another page highlighting the task's usefulness to a particular plan. I also have it integrated to my ~/diary so it could show dates marked on my Emacs calendar, allowing me as well to procrastinate important tasks to be done in convenient time. Avoiding missing deadlines is easy, since PlannerMode also allows me to tag tasks with deadlines, so I have tasks that have me really do stuff while another set for actually clearing the deadline. And, as a side effect of PlannerMode being essentially an extension of EmacsWikiMode, I can publish my plans as a wiki (with RSS even ;) that I use as content for my site, allowing people who I work with to know what I'm up to as well. :)

Now, when I'm not, I use the Hipster PDA. I'm still green using it, but so far, it's great stuff, and I've been using it as my offline PlannerMode.

You may be asking: where's my {cellphone,PDA,laptop}? Answer: I have none of those, but if you're very generous and willing to give me either of the gadgets above, feel free to drop a mail. :D

If you create diagrams and explanations, tablets make a huge difference.

When we solve the problem of incorporating images online, and when we have cheap tablets, you're going to see Wikipedia (and the rest of the web) light up with diagrammed explanations of things.

Visual Language is going to be big and near-ubiquitous. It'll be a lot easier to learn about stuff.

But, the pressure will be on you to make visual explanations. People will have much higher visual literacy. The knowledge in "Understanding Comics" will be near-ubiquitous- common sense. Text-only will be fogey-style.

So, after a while, the pressure will be on to use a Tablet, or whatever the future equivalent is. Perhaps you'll just write with a stylus on a table, and the camera next to you infer where you're drawing, and use a laser to print it down for you, or something. Who knows.

Well, google found this, which seems like a good start;
http://jamesthornton.com/emacs/chapter/emacs_31.ht ml

Then this one has some useful tips;
http://www.emacswiki.org/cgi-bin/emacs/DiredPower