[plug-announce] *** PLUG June Seminar: Making Emacs your bit…

Hi all,

I'm just going to say that this email was written in vim. Though I
suppose that if my editor incorporated a calendar, email system and
Tetris clone I might get the talk announcements out faster.

Title: "Making Emacs your bit^H^H^H preferred editor and IDE"
When: Tuesday, 10th June 2008, 7:30pm - 9:00pm.
Where: 'Futuresphere', Christ Church Grammar School, Queenslea Drive, Claremont
Presenter: Alastair Irvine

Emacs has a very long history of being one of the most full-featured text
editors around. Not only that, but it has a whole galaxy of other features:
everything from a Tetris clone to a Usenet news reader. It also goes
hand-in-hand with Unix's tradition of supporting the programming process.

This introductory talk assumes no prior Emacs experience. It will cover the
following areas:-

 + helpful mindsets for using Emacs
 + highly-efficient text editing in Emacs
 + The use of Emacs as an IDE
 + the philosophy behind Emacs' construction

Traditionally Emacs was terminal-based, but now there are two main "competing"
branches from the original code, each offering different GUIs: GNU Emacs
<http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/> and XEmacs <http://www.xemacs.org/>. They
have other differences too, including architectural and API aspects.

That's right -- the plot thickens -- Emacs has an API. The *majority* of Emacs
is actually written in LISP. This allows bits of Emacs to be easily overridden
or extended. It also makes it relatively easy to add completely new features
and editing modes.

>From a non-programmer's perspective, Emacs is also highly customisable,
offering a very powerful menu-driven configuration interface. It really is the
ultimate kitchen sink editor.

Alastair Irvine has worked as both a Software Engineer and a system
administrator. His professional experience lies in the fields of Linux and
Unix system administration, network and Internet domain management and
operating system maintenance. Alastair is passionate about a wide variety of
technologies including Python, Debian GNU/Linux, C++ and XML. He currently
works with Warpspace IT, an IT consultancy firm, providing IT solutions based
on open systems.

We will be ordering pizza for consumption when the talk is over, and possibly
adjourning to a nearby pub for general discussion and drinks after the
presentation. A gold-coin donation is requested to cover the costs of the
pizza.

As usual, visitors and friends are most welcome.

Information (including a map to the venue) is also available on the PLUG
website: http://www.plug.org.au/events/seminar/.

See you there!

-Patrick
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