Alexandre Vassalotti

My popular¹ Pretty Emacs package just got a tad better. I transferred the package to the brand new PPA service provided by Launchpad. So, what’s new about the package? First, I glad to announce the long-awaited amd64 support. Also, I am adding Gutsy Gibbon to the list of supported distributions.

To use the updated package on Ubuntu 6.10 “Edgy Eft”, add the

following lines to your /etc/apt/sources.list file:

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/avassalotti/ubuntu edgy main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/avassalotti/ubuntu edgy main

To use the package on Ubuntu 7.04 “Feisty Fawn”, add the following lines to your /etc/apt/sources.list file:

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/avassalotti/ubuntu feisty main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/avassalotti/ubuntu feisty main

To use the package on the development version of Ubuntu “Gutsy Gibbon”, add the following lines to your /etc/apt/sources.list file:

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/avassalotti/ubuntu gutsy main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/avassalotti/ubuntu gutsy main

Unfortunately, if you still use Ubuntu 6.06 “Dapper Drake”, you will have to keep using the older package release from my orignal repository. I still support Ubuntu 6.06, but I won’t update the package with newer snapshots.

After adding the repository to your software source list, upgrade your version of the package with:

sudo aptitude upgrade

If you do not have a previous version of the package already installed and you desire to install it, do this instead:

sudo aptitude install emacs-snapshot emacs-snapshot-el

When upgrading the package you might get the following warning message:

WARNING: untrusted versions of the following packages will be installed!

Untrusted packages could compromise your system’s security. You should only proceed with the installation if you are certain that this is what you want to do.

This is due to a bug in the PPA system. I believe that it will be resolved quickly. So, you can safely ignore the warning message for the moment.

Final note, thank you everyone for trusting me and giving me some great feedback about the package. I like to give special thanks to Romain Francoise and Michael Olson for their work respectively on emacs-snapshot and emacs22, during this summer.

This is my first blog entry with my brand new toy, the weblogging mode for Emacs. It uses the XML-RPC interface of your favorite blogging platform to manage your blog. In other words, it transformes Emacs into a thermonuclear blog editor.

Even better, the installation is simple and easy. Here’s the instructions how to get it working. First, check out the source code of weblogger into your .emacs.d directory:

cd ~/.emacs.d/
cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.savannah.nongnu.org:/sources/emacsweblogs \
  co -d weblogger weblogger/lisp

Then, make Emacs load this mode on startup by adding these two lines to your .emacs configuration:

(add-to-list 'load-path "~/.emacs.d/weblogger")
(require 'weblogger)

Now, you probably want to reload your configuration with M-x eval-buffer (assuming your .emacs is still open). Finally, setup weblogger for your blog with M-x weblogger-setup-weblog. This command will ask you a few simple questions, like your username and password for your blog. It will also ask you for the location of the XML-RPC interface of your blog. If you’re using Wordpress, it will be somewhere like http://example.com/blog/xmlrpc.php. If you’re using another blog publishing platform like Blogger or MovableType, it will be somewhere else, so check your documentation.

And you’re done! You can now start new a new post with M-x weblogger-start-entry. Weblogger also includes a whole set of other commands for managing your blog. Look them up, with C-h a weblogger RET. Happy blogging!

If you are using a platform other than a i386, you will need to compile my Emacs packages yourself. So, here a simple guide how to do this.

1. First, make sure you have the source repository enabled, by adding deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/avassalotti/ubuntu gutsy main to your /etc/apt/sources.list.
2. Install the build-dependencies and some packaging tools:

   sudo apt-get update
   sudo apt-get build-dep emacs-snapshot
   sudo apt-get install dpkg-dev devscripts fakeroot emacsen-common

3. Download the source package and compile it with:

   fakeroot apt-get --compile source emacs-snapshot

4. Finally, install the newly built packages:

   sudo dpkg -i emacs-snapshot*.deb

Note, this final step may fail if you have an older version of the package already installed. If it is the case, just do it again.

A burned video, a zapped hard drive and a corrupt RAM module later , I have now, finally, got my system running again (and no, my computer was not struck by a lightning).

For the fans of my Emacs package, I just uploaded a new release, and I will continue to provide weekly releases. Unfortunately, it seems, due to a licensing issue, Romain Francoise orphaned emacs-snapshot and its related packages. Therefore, this means I will have to work harder and fix packaging bugs myself, instead of relying on his bug fixes.

A week before I lost my system, I had promised a special Python quiz, in the issue #31 of Ubuntu Weekly News. I have not forgotten my promise. So if you’re one of the lovers my twisted Ubuntu quizzes, get ready for an awesome quiz. Date and time, when the quiz will be held, will be announced, as usual, in the #ubuntu-trivia channel on FreeNode.

On the final note, I would like to mention that will start posting more frequently on my blog. My current roadmap includes some cool tips-and-tricks, fun script recipes, more stuff about Ubuntu. So, stay tuned!

This week I wasn’t really fun. I first lost my video card — I now have a beautiful snow display. Then, I burned a hard drive in an attempt to access some of my data (luckily, it was my younger brother’s hard drive with his Windows installation). However, it won’t whine about it in a blog post; this isn’t my style.

I just wanted to notice the users of my Emacs package that I won’t be able to update it, until I get my system back on.