Re: [emacs-humanities] Why Emacs-humanities?

[Joseph Johnson]

Dear all,

I just wanted to chime in and say how excited I am about the formation
of the emacs-humanities list -- it's been great to read these
introductions and get a sense of the wider community. As a researcher
in the humanities, I use Emacs for all aspects of my work:

- notes/tasks/calendar/time-tracking in org-mode;
- searching through contents of files and directories with helm-ag;
- generating presentations for lectures (ox-beamer);
- writing and exporting research papers with citations using org and
helm-bibtex (currently I use Pandoc to convert from org to PDF/docx,
but I'm interested in exploring org-ref).

Looking forward to hearing more about how others use Emacs in these
"unconventional" contexts, learning from their examples, and helping
out if I can.

All best,
Joe


On Tue, Dec 22, 2020 at 4:11 PM Oliver Taylor via Emacs-humanities
<emacs-humanities@gnu.org> wrote:
>
> Hello!
>
> I'm not a programmer, not a researcher, and not an academic, I work in the
> visual effects industry, within the film/TV business. Paul R. will know me
> because I wrote Textplay[1], a command-line script for converting
> screenplays written in a markdown-like language into HTML. Before Textplay I
> wrote the "screenbundle" for TextMate[2] (I can't believe that was 15 years
> ago) whose closest spiritual successor is probably Paul's fountain-mode.
>
> Despite all that background I found Emacs difficult to understand and learn
> how to use. I tried org-mode a few times and it seemed really promising, but
> Emacs itself was a hurdle I didn't want to invest in surmounting until the
> global pandemic suddenly landed a bunch of spare time in my lap. I took the
> time to dig in and man... I finally got what all the fuss is about.
> Particularly in regards to org-mode.
>
> What got me over the hurdle in those first few months was learning how to
> re-bind keys and make Emacs work like a standard mac app[3]. Once it was
> effortless to open and save files, tweak my "settings" (in a way that was
> familiar to me), and read the info pages, I was able to explore, experiment,
> and make progress in my Emacs education.
>
> Things I do with Emacs:
>
> + Manage my time/productivity for work and home.
> + Prepare work documents for print/PDF.
> + Write screenplays, stories, etc.
> + Manage and edit my dotfiles.
> + Write and publish (via magit) my personal website.
> + Collect notes and research for things I'm reading/learning.
> + Read RSS feeds.
> + Interact with my pinboard bookmarks.
>
> I too was surprised that so many respondents to the 2020 Emacs survey use it
> primarily for writing and not coding, and that a full 76% said their Elisp
> proficiency is only simple functions or config copypasta. I mean, that’s me!
> So I think this list is great idea, and targets an audience I haven't seen
> targeted much (outside org-mode tutorials).
>
> Excited to learn and contribute what I can.
>
> 1: https://github.com/olivertaylor/Textplay
> 2: 
> https://lists.macromates.com/hyperkitty/list/textmate@lists.macromates.com/message/E74HL4BSPKLHBQTGMV6PMZNZHXPLB7HM/
> 3: https://github.com/olivertaylor/dotfiles/blob/master/emacs/mac.el
>
>


-- 
Dr. Joseph R. Johnson
Assistant Professor of French and Francophone Studies
Georgetown University
josephrjohnson.com