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Elisp Hacking Night: Org-Mode

Logistics

  • We are hybrid tonight, for the first time in a couple of years, with an unknown number of remote participants. It’s gonna get crazy. Please be patient.
  • In person:
    • bathroom key to right of office entrance
    • I need a volunteer to let in latecomers
    • Speakers and microphones off on personal laptops, except (maybe) for the presenter
  • Remote:
    • Please mute yourself unless you are speaking. I anticipate mysterious feedback we will need to track down.
    • If you have headphones please use them
    • How we will handle the multiple microphones vs. people’s individual laptops is TBD
    • BBB (Big Blue Button) experts please identify yourselves in the chat

News

New Emacs version 29.3

  • Emergency security release
  • locking down evaluating things (arbitrary lisp in Org files, LaTeX preview, MIME content in Gnus) when loaded
    • org-mode is affected

New Elisp video

Streamers

  • System Crafters, Code Dive: Project.el in in Emacs. Goes into how it works at the ELisp level.
  • LCOLONQ, on Twitch Tuesdays and Fridays, I don’t know what coffee he is drinking but it’s strong. Fun.

Presentations

Charles Choi: Running SQL on org tables

http://yummymelon.com/presentations/org-sql-tables/org-sql-table.html

Jeff Trull: org-mode exporters

Learning

I’m giving only the briefest of introductions because there are great resources out there - e.g. Tony Aldon’s Reddit post on the subject. Instead, I’m going to quickly skim the code of one particular exporter and note some interesting parts.

ox-gfm

  • An exporter for “Github Flavored Markdown”
  • There is an actual Markdown spec but many nonstandard extensions have been created. This is one of the most popular.
  • Extra features: code highlighting via source blocks, strike-through, better tables
    • mostly these seem to simply replace HTML with corresponding GFM structures that aren’t in plain MD.

Derived Exporters

  • org-export-define-derived-backend saves time for backends that are largely the same as an existing one
  • “like X, except for the following parts of the org file”
  • gfm inherits from md which inherits from html
  • gfm overrides 8 transcoders of md

org-element

  • Exporter transcoders are supplied with AST nodes you can interrogate with org-element-* functions
  • Look at org-gfm-src-block and org-gfm-strike-through
  • helpful for understanding exporter behavior:
(pp-eval-expression '(org-element-parse-buffer)) ; in any org buffer
  • run ~~ in an org buffer to see AST
    • very helpful for understanding exporter behavior

Jeff Trull: an exporter for Keynote

Motivation

  • Beamer output viewed as unprofessional (at least with the themes I chose)
  • Corporate presentation standards
  • Reentering text is tedious and unproductive

Design Considerationss

Translate things into features of equal power

  • plots in Org become plots in Keynote (not images of gnuplot output)
  • table formulas translated faithfully where possible (vs. copying cell contents)
  • Inline LaTeX becomes Keynote “formula” (not image)

Keynote format changes frequently and RE is incomplete

  • Solution: generate Applescript, then run it, like we do with LaTeX

Applescript API is stable but incomplete

  • Solution: script UI actions
    • yes, it’s fragile

Which slide template to use?

  • Need mechanism for users to specify defaults, override per-slide
  • Need “smart” approach for when unspecified
  • Which “text item” (box) should we use?
  • What if we run out of space?
  • Side-by-side layout?

I am still feeling my way through many issues.

Demo (video) of prototype