I'm slowly becoming addicted to Emacs, and I'm curious about what everyone else is doing. What are some of your favorite hacks and changes you've implemented over the years?
Ask HN: What's the weirdest/best thing you've done with Emacs?
1–10 of 44 posts
Re: Ask HN: What's the weirdest/best thing you've done with Emacs?
#2This is not my hack, but I thought it was worth linking to.
Running a bakery on Emacs and PostgreSQL: https://bofh.org.uk/2019/02/25/baking-with-emacs/
Re: Ask HN: What's the weirdest/best thing you've done with Emacs?
#3back in the early days of internet go, I wrote a client for the ascii protocol that used '*' and 'o' for stones, and used it for a few years on an actual vt100.
not super weird, but it really took a lot less work than any of the alternatives and worked great.
Re: Ask HN: What's the weirdest/best thing you've done with Emacs?
#4Maybe not so amazing, or even Emacs specific. But I use a text file to store my browser bookmarks. I type a brief description above each url. I can add search tags.
description blah blah blah
tags: programming performance
http://some_url_foobar
I can run M-x occur. To search and get a nice list of matches by tag or description text.
I think it's superior to any bookmark feature built into a browser. Simply using a text-based format, and a few built-in Emacs features.
Re: Ask HN: What's the weirdest/best thing you've done with Emacs?
#5The weirdest thing I have done in Emacs is using it to generate WAVE files, with a visual interface. The music loops, so you can keep playing with it. I've given talks about the package at !!Con 2021 and EmacsConf 2020.
Info about this at https://zck.org/bangbangcon2021. Video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BeTDIrJeriI. Bonus: the presentation itself is done from within Emacs, in another library I wrote.
Re: Ask HN: What's the weirdest/best thing you've done with Emacs?
#6I've taught a stripped down emacs/org-mode to my partner to manage a hand-crafted meatspace recipe book. Their only "computing" otherwise is done on a smartphone (no laptop or desktop usage at all).
They use org-mode to give structure to the document and then export to HTML with and embedded .css I made with appropriate styles added. This .html page gets printed from Chrome and cut up / added to the recipe book.
My partner couldn't be less interested in tech/computing, but is using emacs as a tool to create a handmade art project. I dunno about weirdest, but this is my example of how emacs can be anything to all peoples.
Re: Ask HN: What's the weirdest/best thing you've done with Emacs?
#7Maybe not so amazing, or even Emacs specific. But I use a text file to store my browser bookmarks. I type a brief description above each url. I can add search tags. description blah blah blah tags: programming performance http://some_url_foobar I view the file with Emacs mode goto-address-mode . So all the hyperlinks are clickable with the mouse or a keybind. I can run M-x occur . To search and get a nice list of mat…
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Re: Ask HN: What's the weirdest/best thing you've done with Emacs?
#8Maybe not so amazing, or even Emacs specific. But I use a text file to store my browser bookmarks. I type a brief description above each url. I can add search tags. description blah blah blah tags: programming performance http://some_url_foobar I view the file with Emacs mode goto-address-mode . So all the hyperlinks are clickable with the mouse or a keybind. I can run M-x occur . To search and get a nice list of mat…
Hi thanks for your sharing your usage! I'm very interested in doing this. I tried to use a sqlite database (using dbrowser gui) to handle my resources for my researching. But I'm not a programmer so I struggled to learn SQL.
Couple questions:
How do you handle mistyping the wrong tag? Is there something you use that could lint mistakes?
Is there a way to show all the tags that's available or you've used? Like grepping to show all the unique tags, but in emacs.
How do you handle stale links (links you no longer visit)? Delete them, move them, mark them stale or something?
If you wanted to see everything related to say tag1, tag2, keyword1, and keyword2, is there some way to like "grab" all those links and view them in a separate buffer? I guess it's more like filtering and reactively changing the list to show you what you want.
Re: Ask HN: What's the weirdest/best thing you've done with Emacs?
#9This isn't a hack, but the way org-columns combines a collapsible tree view with spreadsheet like functionality is neat. I use it for project estimations where breaking things down further and further results in a tree, and the estimate sums of lower items in the tree are combined for the higher items. I don't know if this can be done in a spreadsheet.
Re: Ask HN: What's the weirdest/best thing you've done with Emacs?
#10Maybe not so amazing, or even Emacs specific. But I use a text file to store my browser bookmarks. I type a brief description above each url. I can add search tags. description blah blah blah tags: programming performance http://some_url_foobar I view the file with Emacs mode goto-address-mode . So all the hyperlinks are clickable with the mouse or a keybind. I can run M-x occur . To search and get a nice list of mat…
Hi thanks for your sharing your usage! I'm very interested in doing this. I tried to use a sqlite database (using dbrowser gui) to handle my resources for my researching. But I'm not a programmer so I struggled to learn SQL. Couple questions: How do you handle mistyping the wrong tag? Is there something you use that could lint mistakes? Is there a way to show all the tags that's available or you've used? Like greppin…
> Is there a way to show all the tags that's available or you've used?
No.
But I could implement that in a few minutes. I could search for "tags:" headers, add the trailing text items to a list, then call function delete-dups.
Or I could use a pre-defined list of tags and have a function that lets me select from that. But this starts moving away from the "just a text file" thing, and I'd have to start creating my own custom mode. That's nice but then I'm also forcing rules, structure, and even custom user interface that's beyond "just a text file".
Minimal structure and rules is a feature too, it's easier to add new bookmarks.
> How do you handle stale links
I haven't had a stale link yet. If I ever notice one, I'll delete or correct. Or maybe add a flag STALE: in front of the URL if i want to keep it for historical purposes.
> see everything related to say tag1, tag2, keyword1, and keyword2, is there some way to like "grab" all those links and view them in a separate buffer?
Sort of. I use grep-like line based searching. It searching lines only, not "records". So it treats each line as it's own thing. But it gets the job done. I use the swiper package. With it's out-of-order matching mode. So my search query might be:
food meat
It is flawed. If food and meat are on separate lines, it would not find the match. A more advanced search feature that understands the file format could solve that. Or a better suited database file structure. But not worth it for me. 99% of the time I'm searching 1 keyword only.