Emacs is known as an extensible text editor, but this is a confusing description to authors. Computer programmers refer to writing code as editing, while for an author, the term editing refers to the last stage in the writing process. A text editor is a tool to write text for computers to read. However, Emacs can be a tool for editing code and writing for humans. This article explains the basics of how to write prose using Emacs as an advanced typewriter. This article is part of Emacs Writing Studio, which explains how to use Emacs to undertake research and write and publish articles, books, a ..read more

In the chronicles of cartographic history, few works have captivated the imagination, such as Claudius Ptolemy's "Geography". This monumental second-century creation is the oldest fully preserved theoretical treatise on cartography, written almost 2000 years ago. This article discusses Mapping Ptolemy's Geography with ggplot2. His cartography is not just a collection of maps of the known world in Hellenic times. Ptolemy also provides latitudes and longitudes with fantastic accuracy. Interestingly, he wrote that the best way to store geographic information is as a collection of numbers because ..read more

The Denote package by Protesilaos (Prot) Stavrou provides extensive functionality to create, retrieve, manage and link files in plain text, Markdown and Org Mode. The most redeeming qualities of this package are its filename convention and modular simplicity. You can also use the package to access other file types, such as PDFs or multimedia files (attachments). This way, Denote becomes a fully-featured file-management system. You can read more about Denote in the context of Emacs Writing Studio in another article. The Denote-Explore package came into existence as my collection of Denote files ..read more

Project Euler 7 delves into the wonderful world of prime numbers. These numbers are interesting because they don't follow a predictable pattern. There is no algorithm to calculate primes, which is what makes them valuable in cryptography. As the numbers get larger, the gaps between consecutive primes also increase. There are, however, some interesting patterns. There seem to be infinitely many twin primes, which are prime numbers that with a difference of two, such as (3, 5), (5, 7) and (11, 13). Another pattern in prime numbers are sexy primes, which differ by six: e.g. (5,11), (7, 13) and (1 ..read more

Euler Problem 35 takes us back to the world of prime numbers and circular primes. Euler Problem 35 Definition The number 197 is a circular prime because all rotations of the digits: 197, 971, and 719, are themselves prime. There are thirteen such primes below 100: 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 31, 37, 71, 73, 79, and 97. How many circular primes are there below one million? Proposed Solution in R This code reuses the function that strips all digits for a number, presented in Euler Problem 30. The solution for this problem also use the is.prime function to test whether a number is a prime, develo ..read more

The first step in the Emacs Writing Studio workflow is ingestion (reading, listening and watching) new content. Reading ebooks with Emacs is straightforward as it provides functionality to read several popular types of electronic documents, such as PDF and ePub. The software can also browse the web with an unobtrusive plain text browser. This article is part of the Emacs Writing Studio (EWS), which explains how to use Emacs to undertake research and write and publish articles, books and websites. You can find the EWS configuration on GitHub: Download from GitHub PDF files The Portable Documen ..read more

Over the years I have tried a cornucopia of digital applications to take notes, eventually ending up in Emacs. Emacs has several note-taking packages that extend basic functionality to help you manage your solidified thoughts. Org Roam is a popular note-taking package that uses Org mode as its central repository. The disadvantage of this package is that it relies on a database and can only manage Org mode files. I used Org roam for a couple of years but moved to the Denote package by Protesilaos Stavrou. This package excels in its simplicity and the ease by which it can be extended. The most e ..read more

Let's face it, the configured Emacs interface is hard on the eyes. This article further explains how to improve the Emacs user interface. These settings are obviously opinionated, so this article is, more than anything else, an example of how to configure Emacs to your personal preferences. This article is part of the Emacs Writing Studio series. You can download the complete configuration file for the articles on this website from GitHub. Download from GitHub Improving the Emacs user interface The default Emacs user interface is a hybrid between keyboard and mouse-driven operations. While us ..read more

Writing in Emacs means that everything is plain text, which is a different experience for those people moving from word processors such as MS Office, Apple Pages or Google Docs. This article discusses the principles and benefits of writing plain text and why you should adopt it as a writer. This article is part of the Emacs Writing Studio, which explains how to use Emacs to undertake research and write and publish articles, books, film and theatre scrips and websites. Writing plain text Plain text is not formatted and most commonly has a .txt extension. There are, however, many other plain te ..read more

Emacs is the Swiss Army Chainsaw of productivity tools. This venerable software tool can help you undertake almost every task in the writing process, from idea generation to writing and publishing. Experienced users say they "live inside Emacs" as virtually all computing activities can be done in this software. This article describes a possible Emacs workflow for writers. This article is part of the Emacs Writing Studio configuration, which explains how to use Emacs to undertake research and write and publish articles, books, and websites. The Emacs Workflow The process of writing can be chao ..read more