Emacs 26.1 Released With New Features (lwn.net)

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.

Comments

Skynet option now on by default

[goombah99]

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

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

inetd

[phantomfive]

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?

Re:inetd

[phantomfive]

Now, with the socket based activation and handoff, you can implement the service in emacs.

I like emacs, I used it today. I just don't trust to be that secure as a server for the world. It wasn't the design spec.

Re:inetd

[Anonymous Coward]

> I just don't trust to be that secure as a server for the world. It wasn't the design spec.

I wouldn't either. That's also what the authors think: that's why, by default, it only listens on an Unix domain socket (i.e. local to the machine). You can enable it to listen on a TCP socket. In that case, the client has to provide a key (by default randomly generated by the server).

It's all in the docs.

The Emacs devels do know what they are doing. They are not known to sacrifice security for "shiny", mind you.

Not enough features to be useful

[MetricT]

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...

Re:Not enough features to be useful

[careysub]

The old joke is: "Emacs is a good operating system, but what it lacks is a decent text editor."

Finally, a Highlander sequel I want to watch!

[fahrbot-bot]

... 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!

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

I'm a bit of an Emacs fan.

[Qbertino]

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:I'm a bit of an Emacs fan.

[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:I'm a bit of an Emacs fan.

[phantomfive]

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:I'm a bit of an Emacs fan.

[TheGratefulNet]

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 so much?

I suggested to the guys that emacs can likely do all you want, and it never crashes x servers ;) no one seemed to want to take any time to learn emacs. my suggestion was not interesting to them.

emacs users are mostly older guys. I don't think I've met a single young person (30's and below) who uses or likes emacs. pity, as it really is a great editor and can run equally well in char-cell mode as fancy x-mode. pycharm - well - its java based and crashes daily. boggles the mind why people insist on crapware when solidware is free and has been for over 40 years!

Re:I'm a bit of an Emacs fan.

[angel'o'sphere]

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 back.

Re:I'm a bit of an Emacs fan.

[HiThere]

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:I'm a bit of an Emacs fan.

[hawk]

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 . . .

Re:I'm a bit of an Emacs fan.

[doom]

... 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?

baby steps

[xaosflux]

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

Re:I'm a MICRO-emacs fan

[shoor]

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 now for a few things (I like being able to select a rectangle of text for instance). But my fingers would have never learned the basic text editing commands that are 95% of the keystrokes you use, if I hadn't learned them on micro-emacs.

So yeah, I always have emacs around, for those occasional times when it seems like the right tool, and that's partly because it's a tool I've already learned how to use, at least for certain things. At one time I did explore all the commands in emacs, and there were a few that I actually found handy and still use, like select rectangle, the rest I've forgotten, and I can't see myself ever learning any of the new stuff. But, if I was young, things might be different.

Re: Spy Professor Stefan Halper

[tigersha]

Unlike 99% of the people here I have actually seen Stallman speaking live and he is totally a Jesus-like cult figure. I never understood the pull of religion but after seeing Richard Stallman performing in the living flesh I totally get how Jesus )and probably Mohammed and the average guru) operated.

It was a very interesting experience.

Another test for General Relativity

[Waffle Iron]

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:Is there a cheatsheet for the 2000+ commands?

[doom]

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.

Emacs stil has best clipboard & macro system

[SuperKendall]

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 with the other thing Emacs does right and no other editor has ever got right - macros. In Emacs I can start recording a macro, search fir things, modify them (including using many of the stored text fragments saved off into buffers, or storing text into named text buffers in the middle of the macro to shift it around as part of the macro). Then I can either just replay that macro as many times as I like to fix up similar blocks of text the same way in a file, or save off the macro for later use (in a text format that I can edit and tweak if I choose).

I would even question if it's truly been beaten for large file support when the actions you can take on said large file is probably way more limited.

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

I use Aquamacs on the Mac and I think it works pretty well (or at least is not detrimental), sometimes I still use the CLI but GUi integration is useful.

At least on a Mac I can have a shadow of the copy/paste support by using Cmd-C to copy one thing, Ctrl-K to cut another (which is the Emacs command for kill, which cuts a line and text and places it in he kill buffer). Then I can use Cmd-V and Ctrl-Y to get them both out again.