Quantcast
Channel: Sacha Chua - category - emacs
Viewing all 844 articles
Browse latest View live
↧

2017-12-19 Emacs news

December 20, 2017, 12:58 pm
$
0
0

Links from reddit.com/r/emacs, /r/orgmode, /r/spacemacs, Hacker News, planet.emacsen.org, YouTube, the changes to the Emacs NEWS file, and emacs-devel.

↧
Search

Sorting Org Mode lists using a sequence of regular expressions

December 20, 2017, 8:08 pm
$
0
0

I manually categorize Emacs News links into an Org unordered list, and then I reorganize the list by using M-S-up (org-shiftmetaup) and M-S-down (org-shiftmetadown). I decide to combine or split categories depending on the number of links. I have a pretty consistent order. John Wiegley suggested promoting Emacs Lisp and Emacs development links at the top of the list. I like to sort the rest of the list roughly by interest: general links first, then Org, then coding, then other links at the bottom.

Here’s some code that sorts Org lists in a custom sequence, with unknown items at the bottom for easy re-ordering. It will take a list like: 

- Other:
  - Link A
  - Link B
- Emacs development:
  - Link A
  - Link B
- Emacs Lisp:
  - Link A
  - Link B

and turn it into: 

- Emacs Lisp:
  - Link A
  - Link B
- Emacs development:
  - Link A
  - Link B
- Other:
  - Link A
  - Link B

(defun my/org-sort-list-in-custom-order (order)
  "Sort the current Org list so that items are in the specified order.
ORDER is a list of regexps."
  (org-sort-list
   nil ?f
   (lambda ()
     (let ((case-fold-search t)
           (item
            (when (looking-at "[ \t]*[-+*0-9.)]+\\([ \t]+\\[[- X]\\]\\)?[ \t]+")
              (org-sort-remove-invisible (buffer-substring (match-end 0) (point-at-eol))))))
       (or (cl-position item order :test (lambda (a b) (string-match b a))) (1+ (length order)))))
   '<))

(defun my/emacs-news-sort-list ()
  (interactive)
  (my/org-sort-list-in-custom-order
   '("Emacs Lisp"
     "Emacs development"
     "Appearance"
     "Navigation"
     "Dired"
     "Org Mode"
     "Coding"
     "Calc"
     "Email and news"
     "Other"
     "Discussion"
     "Outside Emacs"
     "New packages?")))

One more little thing automated… The next thing would probably be to write some code that autocategorizes links based on an alist of (item . regexp) pairs, which would also reduce the need to re-sort the items afterwards. Still, this is good for dealing with manual categorization. =)

↧
↧

2017-12-26 Emacs news

December 25, 2017, 8:55 am
$
0
0

Links from reddit.com/r/emacs, /r/orgmode, /r/spacemacs, Hacker News, planet.emacsen.org, YouTube, the changes to the Emacs NEWS file, and emacs-devel.

↧

2018-01-01 Emacs news

January 1, 2018, 5:57 pm
$
0
0

Links from reddit.com/r/emacs, /r/orgmode, /r/spacemacs, Hacker News, planet.emacsen.org, YouTube, the changes to the Emacs NEWS file, and emacs-devel.

↧

2018-01-09 Emacs news

January 9, 2018, 7:43 am
$
0
0

Links from reddit.com/r/emacs, /r/orgmode, /r/spacemacs, Hacker News, planet.emacsen.org, YouTube, the changes to the Emacs NEWS file, and emacs-devel.

↧
↧

2018-01-15 Emacs news

January 15, 2018, 8:51 am
$
0
0
↧

2018-01-23 Emacs news

January 22, 2018, 8:20 am
$
0
0

Links from reddit.com/r/emacs, /r/orgmode, /r/spacemacs, Hacker News, planet.emacsen.org, YouTube, the changes to the Emacs NEWS file, and emacs-devel.

↧

2018-01-29 Emacs news

January 29, 2018, 2:44 pm
$
0
0

Links from reddit.com/r/emacs, /r/orgmode, /r/spacemacs, Hacker News, planet.emacsen.org, YouTube, the changes to the Emacs NEWS file, and emacs-devel.

↧
Search

Org Mode: Inserting a function definition

January 29, 2018, 3:17 pm
$
0
0

While nudging jcs to add a definition of jcs-insert-url to the blog post about Making Things Easier, I realized it might be handy to have a quick function for inserting a function definition without thinking about where it’s defined. This tries to use the definition from the source, and it can fall back to using the stored function definition if necessary. There’s probably a better way to do this, but this was small and fun to write. =)

Naturally, I used it to insert itself:

(defun my/org-insert-defun (function)
  "Inserts an Org source block with the definition for FUNCTION."
  (interactive (find-function-read))
  (let* ((buffer-point (condition-case nil (find-definition-noselect function nil) (error nil)))
         (new-buf (car buffer-point))
         (new-point (cdr buffer-point))
         definition)
    (if buffer-point        
      (with-current-buffer new-buf ;; Try to get original definition
        (save-excursion
          (goto-char new-point)
          (setq definition (buffer-substring-no-properties (point) (save-excursion (end-of-defun) (point))))))
      ;; Fallback: Print function definition
      (setq definition (concat (prin1-to-string (symbol-function function)) "\n")))
    (insert "#+begin_src emacs-lisp\n" definition "#+end_src\n")))
↧
↧

2018-02-05 Emacs news

February 5, 2018, 8:09 am
$
0
0

Links from reddit.com/r/emacs, /r/orgmode, /r/spacemacs, Hacker News, planet.emacsen.org, YouTube, the changes to the Emacs NEWS file, and emacs-devel.

↧

2018-02-12 Emacs news

February 12, 2018, 3:35 pm
$
0
0
↧

2018-02-19 Emacs news

February 19, 2018, 3:14 pm
$
0
0

Links from reddit.com/r/emacs, /r/orgmode, /r/spacemacs, Hacker News, planet.emacsen.org, YouTube, the changes to the Emacs NEWS file, and emacs-devel.

↧

2018-02-26 Emacs news

February 26, 2018, 7:23 am
$
0
0
↧
↧

2018-03-04 Emacs news

March 4, 2018, 4:20 pm
$
0
0

Links from reddit.com/r/emacs, /r/orgmode, /r/spacemacs, Hacker News, planet.emacsen.org, YouTube, the changes to the Emacs NEWS file, and emacs-devel.

↧

Using Org Mode, LaTeX, Beamer, and Medibang Paint to make a children’s book

March 8, 2018, 8:29 pm
$
0
0

Story

  • It’s time to make a smoothie!
  • I pour blueberries into the blender.
  • Mama adds hemp seeds.
  • I add spinach.
  • Mama blends it all with some water.
  • I peel and add a banana.
  • I add some yogurt.
  • Mama blends it again.
  • Yum yum!

Thumbnails

spread0.png spread1.png spread2.png spread3.png spread4.png spread5.png

Process

  • Prerequisites
    • ImageMagick
    • Texlive (probably)
    • latex-beamer
    • Org Mode and Emacs
  • Set up Org Mode export to Beamer 
    (eval-after-load "ox-latex"
  ;; update the list of LaTeX classes and associated header (encoding, etc.)
  ;; and structure
  '(add-to-list 'org-latex-classes
                `("beamer"
                  ,(concat "\\documentclass[presentation]{beamer}\n"
                           "[DEFAULT-PACKAGES]"
                           "[PACKAGES]"
                           "[EXTRA]\n")
                  ("\\section{%s}" . "\\section*{%s}")
                  ("\\subsection{%s}" . "\\subsection*{%s}")
                  ("\\subsubsection{%s}" . "\\subsubsection*{%s}"))))
  • Set up image directories 
    mkdir text-pages blank-spreads drawn drawn-pages
    text-pages Will contain one image per page of just the plain text.
    blank-spreads Will contain text spreads ready for drawing
    drawn Export one image per spread (without the text layers) from your drawing program
    drawn-pages Will contain one image per page combining text and drawing
  • Tweak the header.tex

    This file gets included in the LaTeX file for the children’s book. Tweak it to change the appearance. In this example, I use black serif text at the bottom of the page. 

    \geometry{paperwidth=7in,paperheight=8.5in,left=0.5in,top=0.5in,right=0.5in,bottom=0.5in}
\setbeamercolor{normal text}{fg=black,bg=white}
\setbeamercolor{structure}{fg=black,bg=white}
\usefonttheme{serif}
\setbeamertemplate{frametitle}
{
  \begin{center}
  \vspace{0.7\textheight}                    
  \noindent
  \insertframetitle
  \end{center}
}
\usepackage[noframe]{showframe}
\renewcommand{\maketitle}{}
  • Write the story

    I used Org Mode to make it easy to write the story.

    Some considerations:

    • Because we’re printing this as a saddle-stitched booklet, the number of lines should be a multiple of four. Sixteen is probably a good maximum.
    • The first heading is actually for the last page.
    • The second heading is for the cover page.
    • The third heading is for the first inner page, the fourth heading is for the second inner page, and so on. 
    #+OPTIONS:   TeX:t LaTeX:t skip:nil d:nil todo:t pri:nil tags:not-in-toc author:nil date:nil
#+OPTIONS: H:1
#+startup: beamer
#+LaTeX_CLASS: beamer
#+LaTeX_CLASS_OPTIONS: [20pt]
#+BEAMER_FRAME_LEVEL: 1
#+LATEX_HEADER: \input{header.tex}
#+PROPERTY: header-args :var pages=12

* Story

** 
** 
** 
** It's time to make a smoothie!
** I pour blueberries into the blender.
** Mama adds hemp seeds.
** I add spinach.
** Mama blends it all with some water.
** I peel and add a banana.
** I add some yogurt. 
** Mama blends it again.
** Yum yum!
  • Make the tex, PDF, page PNGs, and spread PNGs
    1. Go to the subtree for the story and use M-x org-export-dispatch (C-c C-e) with the subtree option (C-s) to export it as a Beamer file (option l b).

    2. Use pdflatex to convert the .tex to PDF. 

      pdflatex index.tex

    3. Create one PNG per text page with: 

      convert -density 300 index.pdf -quality 100 text-pages/page%02d.png

    4. Create spreads to draw on with: 

      montage text-pages/page*.png -tile 2x1 -mode Concatenate blank-spreads/spread%d.png

    5. Optionally, create a layered PSD with: 

      convert blank-spreads/spread*.png \( -clone 1,0 -background white -flatten -alpha off \) -reverse spreads-for-drawing.psd
  • Draw

    I imported the PNG layers into MediBang Paint on a Samsung Note 8 Android phone, and then:

    • imported photos
    • traced them
    • painted and shaded them
    • hid the text layers
    • exported one PNG per spread to QuickPic, renamed them, and uploaded them to Dropbox, because I couldn’t figure out how to export to Dropbox directly

    Layer folders were handy for organizing spread-related images. I couldn’t seem to move all of the layers in a layer folder together on Android, but the iPad was able to do so. If I didn’t have the iPad handy, I combined the layers by exporting a PNG and then importeing it back into MediBang Paint.

    This was a decent setup that allowed me to draw and paint even when I was in bed nursing A- and waiting for her to fall asleep. I held the phone with one hand and rotated the canvas as needed so that it was easier for me to draw lines with my right. Because of the awkward position and the small screen size, the lines are not as smooth as I might like, but the important thing is that they’re there. Whee! =)

    It turns out to be possible to use the free MediBang Pro drawing program under Wine on Linux to import the PSD and save it to the cloud. I was also sometimes able to switch to drawing with iPad Pro with Pencil, but it was harder to find time to do that because that usually made A- want to draw too.

    Anyway, after I drew and exported the PNGs, the next step was to…

  • Convert the drawn spreads back to pages and combine them with the text

    Here’s some code that combines the drawing and the text. Keeping the drawing and the text separate until this stage (instead of exporting the PNGs with the text) makes it easier to change the text later by recreating the text PNGs and running this step. 

    (defun my/combine-spread-drawing-and-text (page num-pages)
  (let ((gravity (if (= (% page 2) 1) "West" "East"))
        (spread (/ (% page num-pages) 2)))
    (shell-command
      (format 
       (concat "convert \\( "
               "drawn/spread%d.png -gravity %s "
               "-chop 50%%x0 +repage \\) "
               "text-pages/page%02d.png -compose darken "
               "-composite drawn-pages/page%02d.png")
       spread gravity page page))))

(cl-loop for i from 0 to (1- pages) do
         (my/combine-spread-drawing-and-text i pages))
  • Create print spreads for saddle-stitching

    This code pairs up the drawn pages into a PDF that can be printed duplex. Make sure to choose the option to flip along the short edge. I hard-coded the page orders for 4-, 8-, 12-, and 16-page booklets. 

    (let* ((page-order
        '((0 1 2 3)   ; hard-coded page sequences
          (0 1 2 7 6 3 4 5)
          (0 1 2 11 10 3 4 9 8 5 6 7)
          (0 1 2 15 14 3 4 13 12 5 6 11 10 7 8 9)))
       (sequence
        (mapconcat (lambda (d) (format "drawn-pages/page%02d.png" d))
                   (elt page-order (1- (/ pages 4))) " ")))
  (shell-command
   (format
    "montage %s -tile 2x1 -mode Concatenate print-duplex-short-edge-flip.pdf"
    sequence)))
  • Print and bind

    After printing and folding the book, I used tape to make the book hold together. Tada!

  • Create on-screen PDF for reading

    A little bit of manipulation so that the last page is in the right place: 

    (shell-command
  (format "convert %s onscreen.pdf" 
    (mapconcat 'identity (cl-loop for i from 1 to pages 
      collect (format "drawn-pages/page%02d.png" (% i pages))) " ")))
  • Create thumbnails of spreads 
    (cl-loop
 for i from 0 to (1- (/ pages 2)) do 
 (shell-command
  (format 
   (concat "convert "
           "\\( blank-spreads/spread%d.png "
           "drawn/spread%d.png "
           "-compose darken "
           "-resize %dx -flatten \\) "
           "\\( +clone -background black -shadow 50x1+%d+%d \\) "
           "+swap -compose src-over -composite "
           "thumbnails/spread%d.png")
   i i width shadow shadow i)))
  • Ideas for next steps
    • Better thumbnails for easy previews
    • PDF for online reading
    • More layout possibilities (photos, verses, etc.)
    • Smaller books:
      • crop marks on a full-page print, or
      • the right imposition rules to print more pages on a sheet
↧
Search

2018-03-12 Emacs news

March 12, 2018, 12:00 am
$
0
0

Links from reddit.com/r/emacs, /r/orgmode, /r/spacemacs, Hacker News, planet.emacsen.org, YouTube, the changes to the Emacs NEWS file, and emacs-devel.

↧

Making an 8-page 7″x4.25″ captioned photo book with Org Mode and LaTeX

March 16, 2018, 7:12 pm
$
0
0

Here’s another technique that makes a simple photo book. I wanted to
make an 8-page book that could be printed 4 pages to a 8.5″x14″ sheet
(duplex, flip along the short edge), with a final page size of
7″x4.25″.

Sample with my own photos:

out.jpg

Prerequisites

  • ImageMagick
  • Texlive (probably)
  • latex-beamer
  • Org Mode and Emacs

Process

We can define the labels and their captions in a named table like this:

Let’s Go for a Walk  
   
Caption for photo 1 placeholder.png
Caption for photo 2 placeholder.png
Caption for photo 3 placeholder.png
Caption for photo 4 placeholder.png
Caption for photo 5 placeholder.png
   

Note that the first page is row #1 this time, instead of starting with
the last page.

Then we generate the LaTeX code with some Emacs Lisp, like so: 

#+begin_src emacs-lisp :var pages=story :results value latex :exports results
(mapconcat (lambda (row) (format "\\graphicframe{%s}{%s}" (cadr row) (org-export-string-as (car row) 'latex t))) pages "\n")
#+end_src

I put that in a subtree for easier exporting with C-c C-e C-s l b (org-export-dispatch, subtree, LaTeX, Beamer).

Story

Process

  • Set up Org Mode export to Beamer 
    (eval-after-load "ox-latex"
  ;; update the list of LaTeX classes and associated header (encoding, etc.)
  ;; and structure
  '(add-to-list 'org-latex-classes
                `("beamer"
                  ,(concat "\\documentclass[presentation]{beamer}\n"
                           "[DEFAULT-PACKAGES]"
                           "[PACKAGES]"
                           "[EXTRA]\n")
                  ("\\section{%s}" . "\\section*{%s}")
                  ("\\subsection{%s}" . "\\subsection*{%s}")
                  ("\\subsubsection{%s}" . "\\subsubsection*{%s}"))))
  • Set up the header.tex

    This file gets included in the LaTeX file for the children’s book.
    Tweak it to change the appearance. In this example, I use black serif
    text text on the left side of a picture, both occupying roughly half
    of the page. I also experimented with using a different font this time, which you might need to install (for me, I did apt-get install texlive-fonts-extra). 

    \geometry{paperwidth=7in,paperheight=4.25in,left=0.5in,right=0.5in}
\beamertemplatenavigationsymbolsempty
\usepackage{etoolbox}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{Alegreya}
\usefonttheme{serif}
\setbeamercolor{normal text}{fg=black,bg=white}
\setbeamercolor{structure}{fg=black,bg=white}
%% \setbeamertemplate{frametitle}
%% {
%%   \begin{center}
%%   \noindent
%%   \insertframetitle
%%   \end{center}
%% }
\newcommand{\graphicframe}[2] {
   {
   %% \if #1\empty 
   %% \usebackgroundtemplate{}
   %% \fi
   \ifstrempty{#1}{
   \begin{frame}[plain]
     \begin{center}
     \noindent
     \textbf{\huge{#2}}
     \end{center}
   \end{frame}
   }{
   \begin{frame}[plain]
      \begin{columns}
      \begin{column}{0.48\textwidth}
      \huge{#2}
      \end{column}
      \begin{column}{0.48\textwidth}
      \includegraphics[height=\textheight,width=\textwidth,keepaspectratio=true]{#1}
      \end{column}
      \end{columns}
   \end{frame}
   }
   }
}
\usepackage[noframe]{showframe}
\renewcommand{\maketitle}{}
  • Create the PDF 
    pdflatex index.tex
  • Create one PNG per page 
    mkdir pages
convert -density 300 index.pdf -quality 100 pages/page%d.png
  • Create the 4-up imposition

    The diagram at https://pressnostress.com/iw/howto/booklets/1.html was helpful. 

    montage \( page4.png -rotate 180 \) \( page3.png -rotate 180 \) page7.png page0.png -tile 2x2 -mode Concatenate front.png
montage \( page2.png -rotate 180 \) \( page5.png -rotate 180 \) page1.png page6.png -tile 2x2 -mode Concatenate back.png
convert front.png back.png -density 300 ../print.pdf

Other notes

Placeholder image from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Portrait_placeholder.png – public domain.

↧
↧

2018-03-19 Emacs news

March 19, 2018, 9:32 am
$
0
0

Links from reddit.com/r/emacs, /r/orgmode, /r/spacemacs, Hacker News, planet.emacsen.org, YouTube, the changes to the Emacs NEWS file, and emacs-devel.

↧

Labeling toy storage bins with photos and text using ImageMagick and org-babel

March 25, 2018, 8:56 pm
$
0
0

I wanted to make labels for A-‘s new toy storage: three low Trofast drawer frames all along the wall.

I liked how early childhood drop-in centres labeled their shelves with both pictures and text. That way, kids can find things before she can read, while still being exposed to print. I took pictures of the bin contents and renamed the files to the labels I wanted to put on them, such as 2x2 blocks.jpg. (We have a lot of Duplo.)

This time, I experimented with creating the labels entirely in Imagemagick instead of using LaTeX. First, I used a table in Org Mode to let me easily play with the dimensions and recalculate pixel sizes.

DPI   300
Columns 3  
Rows 5  
Paper width 14 4200
Paper height 8.5 2550
Minimum margins 0.5 150
Label width 4.3333333 1300
Label length 1.5 450

I passed the width and the height to the following code block by using header arguments. I liked using 400 pixels as the height instead of 450, so that’s what I used. My source image size was 4032×3024 pixels. If I resize them to a height of 400, that gives me a width of 533. Allowing 20 pixels for the text left and right borders gives me (- 1300 533 20 20) = 727 as the text width.

#+begin_src sh :dir ~/code/labels :var width=1300 :var textwidth=727 :var height=400 :var pointsize=72 :results silent
for x in source/*; do
  file=$(basename "$x")
  /usr/local/bin/convert \( \( "source/$file" -resize x${height} \) \
     \( -background white -fill black -font Alegreya-Regular -bordercolor White \
         -gravity West -border 20 -pointsize $pointsize -size ${textwidth}x caption:"${file%.*}" \) \
     +append \) \
     -extent ${width}x${height} \
     \( -fill none -stroke gray -draw "rectangle 0 0 $(echo $width - 1 | bc) $(echo $height - 1 | bc)" \) \
     "out/$file.png"
done
#+end_src

Sample resized label:

I moved the ones I wanted from the out directory to a ready directory and combined the ones I wanted to print into a PDF:

#+begin_src sh :dir ~/code/labels :results silent
montage ready/*.png -tile 3x5 -background none -geometry +0+0 print.png
convert print*.png -density 300 -quality 100 print.pdf
#+end_src

Then I printed the labels in colour on an 8.5×14″ sheet of paper (single-sided, landscape), cut them out, and taped them onto the bins with packing tape.

W- suggested taking macro shots that more clearly show the characteristics of things in the bins instead of just aiming down and taking pictures of the contents. Might be a good excuse to show A- basic product photography when we get back.

W- also recommended making the label text bigger. The first time I did it, I just picked a pointsize based on whatever fit the ones I wanted to print. I decided against letting Imagemagick maximize the font size because I didn’t want labels to have very different text sizes. After a little poking around, I figured out how to use caption: instead of label: to give me text that can neatly wrap within a given space, and that will probably let me use 90-point font instead of 72-point font. That will make the next iteration of labels even easier to read.

It’s nice having all these bins. A- is getting pretty good at heading straight for the bin she wants something from, and she even talks about them: “Horse is in animals bin.” I’m glad we labeled the most frequently used bins. I’ll tweak the labels when we get back from our trip. We’ll probably change some of the bin contents anyway.

Hooray for ImageMagick, and hooray for variables in org-babel blocks!

↧

2018-03-26 Emacs news

March 26, 2018, 3:52 pm
$
0
0
↧
Viewing all 844 articles
Browse latest View live
Search