Just spent a good half hour pulling my hair out trying to figure out why one of the #elisp functions I had just written was always returning nil when I tested it. Turns out, my test was mistakenly passing its inputs to the wrong (but similarly named) function (pivot-table-get-columns instead of pivot-table-get-body).
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So Katy has a #Jinhao10 and today the clicker seems to be jamming. When pressed, it seems to resist extending or retracting the nib. I'm giving it a cleaning right now to make sure there was no debris or anything in there stopping it from working, but I don't know if that'll fix it.
Has anyone experienced this before? Is there a fix?
I have a function, pivot-table-get-columns (shorthanded as pt-get-columns). Its job is to take an #OrgMode table and produce an alist of mappings of column names to column numbers. The column names are as defined by section 3.5.10 of the org-mode manual.
Edit: I've been beating my head against a wall for some time on this getting nowhere and less than a minute after asking this, I see it. My first unless should be a when. I'll fix it later.
what does org table source look like by the way? I normally pass org tables into org source blocks (where they become s-expressions in lisp), but I'm not sure what the tables look like internally to org.
further about eq in common lisp at least, I've seen people make a mistake before- when you compile code, if you referred to "" twice, in common lisp compilers are allowed to coalesce them at which point they /will/ be eq. (Eq would be a good test to see if they /had/ been coalesced). But in the general case two strings entered in different places are not eq.
@screwlisp I've not seen the comma prefix used outside a macro before. Also, this would probably be better written as: (push (cons (format "%s" cell) n) result)
it is very exciting! commas have to appear inside backticks, and backticks are just quotes that can have certain things inside of them unquoted (using a comma).
Macros to a large extent work like this because one principle of lisp is that lisp code be regular lisp sequences. At read time, the function names are just symbols. So it's a list of symbols/atoms and lists.
However, sometimes we /do/ want to run some code, hence backtick and comma/unquote.
Backquote forms are merely list (S-expression) constructors where some pieces are constant and some pieces are evaluated. (The latter are marked with commas.) Such forms can be used anywhere. Obviously they are often used in macros, because macro functions construct lists (S-expressions).
I often write `(,foo ,bar) instead of (list foo bar) because the former seems clearer, especially when the structure is more involved.
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So, keeping a #journal in #teeline has had some unexpected benefits for my #ADHD brain beyond my handwriting just being more able to keep up with the rate of my thoughts.
I might blog about this later, but the TL;DR is that the process of transcribing my entries requires me to think deliberately about the meaning of every word I've written.
For all the criticism I have of dynamically typed languages, I have to admit that the way #elisp (and presumably #lisp in general) does in-line documentation is pretty nice.
The seemingly canonical way of detecting whether the C-u modifier was used on an interactive function call (when an actual numerical argument wasn't provided) in #elisp feels... icky. #emacs
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I'm thrilled to announce that I’ll be speaking live at CrimeCon UK in London on June 7th and 8th, 2025! As the host of The Cult Vault, I’ve spent years exploring the hidden dynamics of coercive control — and now, I’m honoured to be joining a panel of…
In this episode of the Cult Vault Podcast, host Kacey speaks with Maya Badham, founder of Safeguarding Human and Animal Survivors of Sexual and Domestic Abuse (
In the latest gripping episode of The Cult Vault Podcast, host Kacey welcomes Maya Badham, founder of Safeguarding Animal & Human Survivors of Sexual and Domestic Abuse (SAHSDA), for a powerful and eye-opening discussion on the intersection of animal…
Wrapping my brain around using #org-mode as a spreadsheet. Is there a way to pass a range of cells as a vector to a custom function? Ideally, I'd like to embed this function into the file itself. #emacs
That shows you how to define a column formula with elisp. I think think usual "vsum" and friends are vector operations from the emacs calculator, so it seems very likely?
I gotta go to the bike shop, but my heuristic would be:
1. I know vsum works in org-mode spreadsheet formulas 2. I know the v stands for "vector" 3. Can I use that function's source to define my own vector operations?
I like to think the answer is YES. I am hopeful at least.
@Shae Erisson So, of appears that I can pass simple (single cell) references into raw elisp functions, but not ranges. I'll have to have a closer look at vsum as mentioned earlier to see if there's a solution there.
I would be interested if you manage to read org tables as lisp lists. I haven't tried it yet, but I plan to do it occasionally, so cfw would get an org-table import/export. Currently it can do CSV.
Hi @me If you insert a formula in a table cell #orgmode will put it after the table in a special line (so you can see and edit it after) and insert the result in place. Of course, it can be recalculated anytime you want to.
I guess you could fairly easily write a macro that automatically created a lexical scope and added some prefixes to variable used within its body - Doug Hoyte's "Let over lambda" book has #CommonLisp examples of this kind of approach as way to cut down the syntactic overhead of using gensym in macros. Without much thought, I'd assume something similar could be done in #EmacsLisp
@The ol' tealeg 🐡 I'm thinking something a little more robust involving using a symbol's property list to store everything contained within that namespace.
I'm probably biting off more than I can chew at this point in my understanding of elisp, but I'm sure this idea will stick around in my brain until I have enough of an understanding to pull it (or something comparable) off.
...or I find some already existing thing that does what I want (which is more likely).
SBCL, for example, has the in-package macro set the value of the special variable *PACKAGE* which, I guess, would then ultimately get used in every definition and reference.
I haven't having looked at it, but I imagine that it mostly comes down to switching out in-buffer eval functions to those which are current-package aware. If you resolve and swap out all symbols with their "absolute" versions during definition, you should be able to call that code from different namespaces without problems.
where (:use nil) serves the same purpose as (:use :cl) in Common Lisp.
Afterwards, you can either do
(in-namespace :foo) ...
or
(with-namespace :foo ...)
You should also be able to file-locally set `buffer-namespace', but I haven't tried it.
Here's a working snippet:
(define-namespace :foo (:use nil) (:export bar setq nil))
(define-namespace :baz (:use :foo) (:export bar))
(with-namespace :foo (setq foo 2))
foo:bar ;; => 2
(with-namespace :baz (setq bar 5) (setq quux 10))
foo:bar ;; => 5 baz:bar ;; => 5 baz:quux ;; => 10
although you'll need to patch elisp--preceding-sexp for C-x C-e to see the individual values. Here's the code you need to evaluate (at least on my version, I suggest trying this in a fresh emacs in case something goes wrong): 0x0.st/84sj.txt
I have fleshed it out more (or rather, ported over CL's packages): git.sr.ht/~thuna/cl-package (this is still the same repo, but I've changed the name).
The demo is: - require cl-package / load cl-package.el - require cl-package-reader / load cl-package-reader.el - go to a new buffer (or the scratch buffer) - M-x cl-package-activate-reader RET - Insert the snippet - Do eval-buffer, or after applying the same patch as before (replace `(read...)' with `(funcall load-read-function...)' in `elisp--preceding-sexp') go through each form (you can skip cl-in-package) one by one with C-x C-e - Have fun
The snippet is:
(cl-defpackage test (:use :global) (:shadow baz) (:export baz))
Where the second nil means that no symbol with the literal name "test:baz" exists in emacs, and that the symbol we're referring to with test:baz is something else entirely, which you can also see with:
(eq (intern "test:baz") 'test:baz) => nil
There are probably a lot of problems, some of which are: - defpackage does not play nice with redefinitions (or rather, you can't do it at all), just pop cl-package-registry (but not completely, always leave the last item, if you want to fully reset it set it to (list obarray)) and redefine it again - I have the elisp runtime in the pseudo-package :global, but trying to use :global in your own package will force it to check all (tens of thousands of!) symbols for conflicts, so it'll take a couple seconds during the defpackage in the snippet. I will later define packages containing the various elisp packages for proper modularity, so it should get better - Once you evaluate cl-in-package, eval-buffer starts with cl-in-package, which it probably shouldn't be doing, but I don't know and who knows how many more!
@screwtape Oh come on you understand the situation perfectly ;) You can write hacks to make it look like there are namespaces, but at the end of the day, they are just hacks.
There has been multiple discussions about it on emacs-devel, and there is no way to get elisp out of the dark ages until the usual suspects are replaced. Which is not happening any time soon.
@screwlisp @Nicolas Martyanoff If you think I'd actually have anything interesting to say. I feel I can't really hold a candle to some of your previous guests. I'm just aimlessly noodling around with stuff.
You know I like to set an extremely low bar for quality personally. And after all, everyone eats at your sushi place every week...!
It's also interesting to everyone to get opinions on common lisp from the outside or somewhat recent arrivals. I think you and jeremy_list are both interesting as sort of Haskell/MOO/emacs/common lispers.
Counterpointing the "golang for serious business" long-time lisp-heads like @galdor
So, I've finally settled on a technique to keep shimmer inks from clogging my #FountainPens and it's working well, but it's not exactly condusive to writing in #teeline which is what I use 90% of the time these days.
It looks like I wasn't moving the pen enough. As I would keep writing, the shimmer would collect in the feed until it just straight-up clogged. I didn't realize I had to periodically roll the pen around even while I was actively using it. This should have been obvious by the fact that my writing kept getting more and more, well... shimmery before the ink stopped flowing.
I'll try this approach in the future.
Rookie mistake, but in my defense, I didn't even know that shimmer inks were even a thing until late last year.
In a recent episode of The Cult Vault Podcast, I had the incredible opportunity to sit down with Wendy Baker, a former member of the infamous Source Family.
It always amuses me whenever I think about the fact that I got one of my favourite #FountainPens for free with a bottle of ink. It's even more amusing that I've never inked that pen up with that ink.
@Kate McDonald It's a bit of a pain to work with because I only use it with a dip pen* and have to juggle that with a UV flashlight. That aside, it works really well. Completely invisible under normal lighting conditions and shows up really well under UV.
* Because I feel that cleaning it out of a regular pen would be a pain.
@jlamothe Ah it looks so fun! You've made me excited again about trying my sample. I got mine with the intention of using it for letters to my nephews . . . one of these years I will gift them a UV flashlight and then I can send them letters to read with it 😀
In this episode of the Cult Vault podcast, host Kacey speaks with Wendy Baker, a former member of the Source Family and daughter-in-law to the leader, about her
So, with this past #Inkvent calendar, I've found myself in possession of a bunch of shimmering inks. Problem is that they tend to clog my #FountainPens. Are there any inexpensive pens that handle shimmering inks well?
I've found that my Wing Sung 3008s don't clog up much anyway, and when they do they're easy to take apart to clean them, at least once you know how. Also cheap enough to be disposable once they break. 😀 The downside is that they're known for cracking and/or the screw in the cap rusting, hence the importance of being cheap.
I've cleaned out two this weekend - I can't usually get the last little bits of glitter out, but what's left doesn't seem to block it when reassembled.
huh, weird. Which ink? There are some in the inkvent that have larger and too much shimmer and is basically for dip pens as far as I'm concerned, I don't remember what they're marked with - not shimmer or chameleon but something like star bright or something.
@redbanjer 🪕🇺🇦🇨🇦🇬🇱🇲🇽 Yeah, dip pens were my go-to solution. It's just annoying to have to keep mixing up the ink in the bottle in addition to continually dipping the pen.
I bought a few of those small plastic "Dinky Dips" ink containers- they come in three sizes. I can use my ink syringe to put some of my shimmer ink into a Dinky, add a drop or two of Gum Arabic (to help make it more dip nib friendly), and it's a better size--- you can use the dip nib to stir the ink each time you dip it in, since it's not that deep and the container mouth is wide (straight up and down shape). Inks stores well in it, the plastic cap screws tight. Just a thought!
It looks like I wasn't moving the pen enough. As I would keep writing, the shimmer would collect in the feed until it just straight-up clogged. I didn't realize I had to periodically roll the pen around even while I was actively using it. This should have been obvious by the fact that my writing kept getting more and more, well... shimmery before the ink stopped flowing.
I'll try this approach in the future.
Rookie mistake, but in my defense, I didn't even know that shimmer inks were even a thing until late last year.
I have successfully built my first #Emacs package. I want to clean it up a bit before I consider releasing it though. Also, while I can build a simple (single file) package, buildig a multi-file one is still eluding me.
When I try to install it, I get the following (less than helpful) error message: Wrong type argument: stringp, nil
Is there a way I can get more detail on why this is failing?
If you use M-x toggle-debug-on-error, you should get a full stack trace showing what was called, with what value and from where. That should at least get you started.
So getting a stack trace doesn't seem to have provided any useful additional information, but I have a potential starting point. When I look at the auto-generated *-pkg.el file from the installed single file version, I notice that there are some additional parameters passed to define-package that were not mentioned in the elisp documentation.
To demonstrate that I'm not crazy, this is from section 42.3 of the elisp manual: Function: define-package name version &optional docstring requirements
This is from the documentation for define-package: (define-package NAME-STRING VERSION-STRING &optional DOCSTRING REQUIREMENTS &rest EXTRA-PROPERTIES)
So Katy has a #Jinhao10 and today the clicker seems to be jamming. When pressed, it seems to resist extending or retracting the nib. I'm giving it a cleaning right now to make sure there was no debris or anything in there stopping it from working, but I don't know if that'll fix it.
Has anyone experienced this before? Is there a fix?
Is the trap door opening/closing properly? It could be wedged somehow. You should be able to poke the nib unit through it manually with the top removed and see if it works as expected.
Also when it's apart you can press the rear of the nib unit up into the tail and press the button and see if it operates normally that way.
Then you at least know which end of the pen is misbehaving.
@Jim P. It looks like there was some debris caught in the mechanism. A good cleaning seems to have resolved the issue. I'm a little confused as to where it came from though.
Coming down off a panic attack relapse. I'm medicated and laying in bed in the dark. I don't know of this was the right strategy, but I needed to stop the fireworks in my brain, and shutting out as much external stimulus as possible seemed the right thing to do.
As a side note, I'm now pretty much convinced I'm somewhere on the spectrum. This felt a lot like the way I've heard an autistic meltdown to be. Sounds were particularly jarring. Katy was packing up her equipment to send back to her old job and the sound of the packing tape was actually painful.
I can think of a number of other incidents where I've become seemingly irrationally agitated at something that should have been a minor thing, and any form of external stimulus whatsoever only made it worse (which really sucks when people try to "help").
That's very much an AS response. Some noises, physical sensations, environments are just intolerable, as if they're actively attacking your brain the way allergens do your immune system.
Finding out that my responses to things were *real*, and not just me being temperamental, was a big help.
From survival to storytelling—how one woman is shedding light on institutional abuse.In this gripping episode of The Cult Vault Podcast, host Kacey welcomes Kari Bunn, a survivor of the infamous CEDU reform school and a vocal advocate exposing the da…
Katy likes these YouTube channels where they teach about canning and such. One of the people in one of these videos is wearing a shirt with what looks like an AR-15 that says "defense is not a crime".
What in the cinnamon toast fuck do you need an AR-15 to defend yourself from?
How about: The current version of the Stazi (rhymes with mice), PB and III%er paramilitary and the right wing meal team 6 deplorables who are itching to use one of the 20 million AR’s that are out there right now. If you don’t want one, don’t buy one. Hope this helps
Got my hair cut for the first time in probably a year because I have an interview tomorrow for a job I really want to get (and think I have a pretty good shot at).
It looks decent, but has revealed a good deal more grey than I'm accustomed to seeing.
This morning Katy noticed a rash all around my neck. I can only attribute it to the new (to me) shirt I wore yesterday. It's like my body has revolted against wearing a shirt and tie ever again.
Jonathan Lamothe
in reply to Jonathan Lamothe • •I've run into a snag.
I have a function,
pivot-table-get-columns(shorthanded aspt-get-columns). Its job is to take an #OrgMode table and produce an alist of mappings of column names to column numbers. The column names are as defined by section 3.5.10 of the org-mode manual.My code is here.
When I pass this function a table without column labels, it crashes on the
formatline (which it shouldn't even be reaching).Can someone explain to me what I'm doing wrong?
(cc: @screwlisp )
#emacs #elisp
Edit: I've been beating my head against a wall for some time on this getting nowhere and less than a minute after asking this, I see it. My first
unlessshould be awhen. I'll fix it later.reshared this
screwlisp and Chip Butty reshared this.
screwlisp
in reply to Jonathan Lamothe • • •actually, I'm unaware of
(setq result (((format "%s" cell) . n) . result))
being a permissable form. It looks like
(setq result `((,(format "%s" cell) . ,n) . ,result))
to me but I might be wrong. Does it fix the problem or did you have another insight?
screwlisp
in reply to screwlisp • • •screwlisp
in reply to screwlisp • • •screwlisp
in reply to screwlisp • • •screwlisp
in reply to screwlisp • • •Vassil Nikolov
in reply to screwlisp • • •@screwtape
> in common lisp compilers are allowed to coalesce
[constants]Right, for details see what the _file_ compiler in particular may do.
Jonathan Lamothe
in reply to screwlisp • •I did some testing and found that if I pass a named table into a source block as a variable, it automatically gets converted into s-expression form.
See below:
Jonathan Lamothe
in reply to screwlisp • •@screwlisp I've not seen the comma prefix used outside a macro before. Also, this would probably be better written as:
(push (cons (format "%s" cell) n) result)It would certainly be more legible.
Jonathan Lamothe
in reply to Jonathan Lamothe • •@screwlisp Huzzah! That along with your point on
eqvs.equaldid the trick!Now I've just got to, you know, write and document all the rest of it.
If this works out, I'm really excited about publishing it. I was surprised that it didn't already seem to exist.
screwlisp
in reply to Jonathan Lamothe • • •it is very exciting!
commas have to appear inside backticks, and backticks are just quotes that can have certain things inside of them unquoted (using a comma).
Macros to a large extent work like this because one principle of lisp is that lisp code be regular lisp sequences. At read time, the function names are just symbols. So it's a list of symbols/atoms and lists.
However, sometimes we /do/ want to run some code, hence backtick and comma/unquote.
screwlisp reshared this.
Vassil Nikolov
in reply to Jonathan Lamothe • • •@screwtape
> the comma prefix used outside a macro
Backquote forms are merely list (S-expression) constructors where some pieces are constant and some pieces are evaluated.
(The latter are marked with commas.)
Such forms can be used anywhere.
Obviously they are often used in macros, because macro functions construct lists (S-expressions).
I often write
`(,foo ,bar)
instead of
(list foo bar)
because the former seems clearer, especially when the structure is more involved.
#CommonLisp
Vassil Nikolov
in reply to screwlisp • • •@screwtape
> `((,(format "%s" cell) . ,n) . ,result))
In Common Lisp you would write
`(... ,@result))
but right now I am only fairly sure that Elisp has comma splicing.
#CommonLisp
#Elisp
Christian Tietze
in reply to Jonathan Lamothe • • •Jonathan Lamothe likes this.
hajovonta
in reply to Jonathan Lamothe • • •Jonathan Lamothe likes this.
screwlisp
in reply to hajovonta • • •Sensitive content
trivial-pivot-tables
Sacha Chua
in reply to Jonathan Lamothe • • •GitHub - tbanel/orgaggregate: Aggregate tables in Org mode
GitHubZeStig
in reply to Sacha Chua • • •Jonathan Lamothe
in reply to Sacha Chua • •Sacha Chua
in reply to Jonathan Lamothe • • •Jonathan Lamothe likes this.