
Emacs 26.1 released - deng
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2018-05/msg00765.html
======
deng
A few more (personal) highlights from the release:

* New minor mode 'pixel-scroll-mode' provides smooth pixel-level scrolling.

* The networking code has been reworked so that it's more asynchronous than it was (DNS resolution and TLS negotiation do not block Emacs main thread).

* Emacs no longer prompts about editing a changed file when the file's content is unchanged. Instead of only checking the modification time, Emacs now also checks the file's actual content before prompting the user.

* A new submode of 'html-mode', 'mhtml-mode', is now the default mode for html files. This mode handles indentation, fontification, and commenting for embedded JavaScript and CSS.

* Improved CSS mode

* Intercepting hotkeys on Windows 7 and later now works better.

~~~
da4c30ff
Also better look and feel[1] for Mac (including dark mode) users with

    
    
      (add-to-list 'default-frame-alist '(ns-transparent-titlebar . t))
      (add-to-list 'default-frame-alist '(ns-appearance . dark))
    

[1]: [https://imgur.com/aRdxPk0](https://imgur.com/aRdxPk0)

~~~
cactuseater
Wow, just tried it out and it looks really good. What theme are you using?
(ref. screenshot)

~~~
da4c30ff
It's doom-nord from the doom-themes package.

------
gkya
I suggest to anyone serious w/ Emacs to follow the master branch. I have been
compiling once a week since almost a year and did not experience any breakage.
My routine is fetch, see the output from "git diff HEAD..FETCH_HEAD --
etc/NEWS | less", pull --ff, compile and install. The benefit being you don't
get a whole bunch of news when you update to a major version, but get there
gradually; and also the master has the newer features. They keep that branch
really stable.

~~~
na85
I similarly encourage any Mac users who are serious about emacs to use
Mitsuharu Yamamoto's fork, which adds several usability improvements that RMS
refuses to endorse and is just generally a better experience on Mac. Mainline
GNU Emacs feels clunky and obsolete by comparison.

~~~
gaius
_that RMS refuses to endorse_

What's his rationale?

~~~
jordigh
That Emacs should not give an advantage to non-free operating systems.

Now, because Emacs is free software, this doesn't prevent anyone such as
Yamamoto to go and modify Emacs. Rms doesn't want _his_ officially-sanctioned
version to have Mac-only improvements, but he also defends the GPL which
allows other people to do so. Rms isn't going to go and tell Yamamoto to take
down his fork or anything (but he probably will tell macOS users at every
opportunity that they are working with an abusive OS).

~~~
na85
It might be abusive in the sense that it's nonfree but at least it's
functional.

Year of the Linux desktop jokes aside, I've just lately got sick of how broken
Linux is on most laptops, even ThinkPads which are supposed to be the gold
standard.

My ThinkPad never had working suspend resume, for example, which is just basic
stuff that Linux can't seem to get right.

I'm not 24 and childfree any more. I don't have time to fiddle with acpi or
systemd.

~~~
jordigh
I've used two Thinkpads. I'm currently on an X1 5th gen running Debian stable
and it's the most blissful computer experience I've ever had. Everything
works, the damn thing is fast, 12 hours of battery life and it's so light. I
don't understand this magic but I'm glad it's there.

Previously I was on an x250 also on Debian stable which also worked flawlessly
until I dropped it hard. It was just a little heavier and a little slower than
my current X1.

On the topic of Macs being stable; I've seen my coworkers experience a lot of
grief during the past few months with some macOS updates.

I'm not saying that the experience is in general better with one setup or
another, just that mine has been good. I'm sure your experiences are valid
too.

------
avar
For those unfamiliar with GNU Emacs version numbers, they always start at X.1,
not X.0, so this is the first major release after 25.1 released in September
2016.

~~~
LukeShu
Lest someone misread this and think that Emacs hasn't had an update in 2
years: That says "major release". The previous release was the 25.3 minor
release in September 2017.

~~~
avar
And least anyone misunderstand your comment and misses the big picture, those
are all in principle minor bugfix (although with some new features).

The release you're referring to has maybe 20 lines of non-autogenerated code
changed, and was "an emergency release to fix a security vulnerability in
Emacs".

By and large new Emacs features only get released every 2-4 years. If you
write any non-trivial Emacs code you're only targeting the major releases, and
if you're contributing to Emacs you can expect other users to have your
feature in the in their hands by the time your newborn is old enough to walk
around and argue with you.

It's one of the remaining free software projects that really takes its time
with releases.

1\.
[https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/history.html](https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/history.html)

~~~
TeMPOraL
It's a mature, solid platform, it can't just "move fast and break things".

> _and if you 're contributing to Emacs you can expect other users to have
> your feature in the in their hands by the time your newborn is old enough to
> walk around and argue with you._

Lest someone misread _that_ and comes away with a misconception about the big
picture - that's true if you're contributing to _Emacs proper_. I.e. you're
writing C and Emacs Lisp code which is meant to be included for release with
the main project.

99% of the things you can dream of adding to Emacs can be done in Elisp, and
shared with other people immediately. Since Emacs is a stable platform, you
probably won't have to worry about the underlying API breaking until your
current newborn is old enough to start asking where children come from.

------
mayankkaizen
I am not a programmer but have been learning programming since last 2 years.

Only yesterday, I installed emacs and spent half an hour on it. Even opened a
tutorial to learn the basics.

But I got irritated pretty soon and gave it up. Now I am thinking about people
who use it like a pro. How the hell did they master this beast?

~~~
nanna
I'm not a programmer but I have dabbled in code for a while. Emacs honestly
made me love using my computer again.

Give yourself a full day for the tutorial and then try to stick to it even
though for a while you will be slower and clumsier at everything. This will
pay off massively.[0]

Make it part of your routine. Apart from coding in it, use it for email
(mu4e/offlineimap), for git (magit), as a local and remote file manager, for
writing notes and running a diary (org mode), for submitting papers
(LaTeX/Auctex), for your terminal...

Speaking for myself, it actually improves my quality of life, and I feel like
I've only scratched the surface.

[0] [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/10942008/what-does-
emacs...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/10942008/what-does-emacs-
learning-curve-actually-look-like)

~~~
TeMPOraL
I'd skip e-mail at the beginning, because it can be a real pain to set up (not
necessarily on Emacs end - but the whole offlineimap thing, credentials,
etc.). But I very much recommend magit - if you're using git, it'll blow your
mind.

[https://magit.vc/](https://magit.vc/)

------
lambda
> Flymake has been completely redesigned

Hmm, I just switched to flycheck. Is it worth checking out this new flymake?

~~~
wyuenho
No. Flycheck is the 7th most downloaded emacs package and the 3rd most popular
package that's not a library. It's directly behind helm and magit. You can't
just replace something like this with a thin stroke. The only reason flymake
was rewritten was because the emacs devs couldn't get flycheck into emacs
core, which IMHO is for the best. emacs releases is just too slow.

------
krylon
Completely OT, but I remember when building Emacs was like "there goes my
afternoon". On my current desktop (which is kind of snazzy, I admit), it takes
less than 30 seconds wall clock time. This is one aspect of The Future(tm) I
definitely appreciate. ;-)

~~~
TeMPOraL
You have one mother of a desktop there. Or, you're not doing a clean build :).

For me, full clean make takes AFAIR something like 10 to 20 minutes. i5-2400,
12GB RAM, SSD drive. Still, totally worth it :). I've been running Emacs 26
for 2 months now.

~~~
kurlberg
You are compiling it with "make -j 8" (or -j 4), right?

~~~
TeMPOraL
Oh.

Thanks!

------
marolafm
TRAMP support for gdrive! That sounds amazing

------
dman
24 bit color support on terminal!!

------
josteink
For the uninitiated, .1 means actual first release.

So this is the first official release of Emacs 26.

------
eslaught
Does anyone know if the concurrency support has made it into TRAMP yet? I
recently switched to sshfs because I couldn't stand having TRAMP block my
editor while saving remote files.

------
jaimehrubiks
Do any of you know if tramp does still freeze if remote prompt´s ´text´ has
special characters? this is a bug that used to bother me last year.

------
azkae
Scrolling with the trackpad seems way better by default, no more mouse-wheel-
scroll-amount/mouse-wheel-progressive-speed hacks !

------
e12e
For those more familiar with emacs; what happened with the idea of moving to
guile scheme? Is it done? Abandoned?

~~~
rekado
It is not an idea that is supported by the whole Emacs community. It is an
idea that is supported by the Guile community and RMS. Work has been done to
make Guile Emacs work, but it is still slow (as it doesn't seem to compile
elisp before running it) and somewhat experimental.

It really just needs someone to make it work more reliably and then
demonstrate that it is a desirable thing not just in theory but in practise.
Nothing short of doing the work would be sufficient to convince the most
active Emacs developers.

The person who had been doing most of the work on Guile Emacs isn't currently
making progress on this end, so other interested people are welcome to
participate in the effort.

(I'm a Guiler and Emacs user and strongly support the idea of letting Emacs
sit on top of the Elisp implementation in Guile.)

~~~
AlexeyBrin
> It is not an idea that is supported by the whole Emacs community.

One problem is portability, Emacs Guile means alienating Windows users. Guile
does not run on Windows.

As it is now, I can use same Emacs on my home Mac system, on my work Windows
10 computer and on various Linux servers.

~~~
rekado
> Guile does not run on Windows

This hasn't always been this way, though, as far as I know. It is also not an
insurmountable obstacle, but it is one of many small things that make Emacs
developers worry.

Another problem that makes Guile Emacs somewhat less attractive is the
difference in string handling. Emacs deals well with improperly encoded
strings (because that's what people throw at it), whereas Guile prefers to
either deal with byte streams or properly encoded strings. Shuffling strings
back and forth between an Elisp and a native Guile representation is not very
attractive.

------
nanna
Any advice for installing 26.1 alongside a debian repo 25.1.1 build?

------
andyidsinga
this is pretty cool:

> TRAMP has a new connection method for Google Drive

------
mrybczyn
There isn't a windows compile available yet 8( \-- yes, i don't have a choice
at work.

~~~
unsignedint
Perhaps try RC binary until the release is ready?

[https://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/emacs/pretest/windows/](https://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/emacs/pretest/windows/)

~~~
unsignedint
Adding as of 31st, the above has a real 26.1 candidate to be promoted to main
site in a few days.[0]

[0]: [https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-
devel/2018-05/msg00...](https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-
devel/2018-05/msg00825.html)

