Games: The Emacs Carnival Post For September 2026

I don't play games within Emacs. Instead I enjoy learning about the many functions and modes it has. I even derived a Tip of the Day that displays help on a randomly-chosen function. I invoke it at startup; there's a non-zero probability that I'll spend 15 minutes or so exploring the function it provides.

I get the impression that I'm not the only one who enjoys Emacs this way. When I read others' postings, I see references to "customize," "configure," "init file," "rabbit hole." I'm pretty sure I also came across a few posts that contained this: "my ex-spouse made me chose between him/her and Emacs." Often, reading these posts is enjoyable in itself.

I enjoy writing and blogging, too. I started my first journal when I was 13 years old. My answer to "What book would you choose if stranded on an uninhabited island?¹" would be "a blank notebook that comes with a pencil." I also enjoy interacting with the Emacs community. It's as if this "Ray on Emacs" blog provides entertainment squared. This can be expressed mathematically as E2, where E is entertainment and 2 is two.

While researching this topic, I was surprised at how many games we can choose from, even in plain vanilla. Naive folks might scoff at programmers who write games for Emacs. But they don't understand that games demonstrate Emacs' capabilities. I suspect the underlying motivation is that writing games for Emacs is fun. It's a challenge that leads to accomplishment.²

I'm looking forward to reading submissions to Emacs Carnival September 2026 and trying some games. participate is Humor not to necessary.³

¹ aka "Desert Island" see Uninhabited island on Wikipedia

² Folks in the MS-DOS USENETs would joke about writing Batch Files that could do calculus. At least I think it was a joke.

³ "Humor is not necessary to participate" (as evidenced by this post).

Emacs Numbered Backup Strategy

Emacs produces a backup of each file by default. It does this by appending a tilde to the file's name. For example, Myfile.txt is backed up to Myfile.txt~. It's a reasonable strategy, assuming that a Version Control system is in place.

But in the absence of version control, you're limited to restoring just the previous version; older versions need to be restored from backup.

I use git for coding projects that I share to the public. But I didn't create a repository for my home directory. So when C-c a m TAG¹ generated an error instead of a list of TAGged items, I hoped fervently that the latest init file change was to blame.

After finding and fixing the problem quickly, (and realizing I was lucky this time), I resolved to be more diligent about disaster recovery. I looked into what backup schemes Emacs already provides.

Emacs can create unique backups for a file rather than overwriting the previous backup. When Emacs sees a numbered backup for a given file, it will make a new, sequentially-named file for each backup of that file, while continuing to use the "append tilde" method for other files.

Once I renamed (or copied) .emacs~ to .emacs.~1~, Emacs created backups named .emacs.~2~, .emacs.~3~ (and so on). I didn't even need to change a variable -- when Emacs detected .emacs.~1~, it knew that backups of .emacs needed to be numeric, so it acted accordingly. Emacs continues to use bills.org~ as the backup for bills.org. Until I tell it otherwise.

Read the Emacs Manual to learn more about numbered backups.

---

¹ C-c a m invokes org-tags-view

The default values for the pertinent backup variables are:

• make-backup-files is t
• backup-by-copying is nil
• version-control is nil

How Much Management Does Knowledge Need?

The topic of this month's Emacs Carnival interests me, even though I "dump ... notes into a directory and simply grep for information ...."⁰ Org does not work the way my brain works,¹ or rather, my brain doesn't work the way Org works.

I do use Org. At first I created a few Org files (work.org and home.org, and maybe todo.org) thinking I could rigidly dedicate all my topics to them.

Over time I had about dozen files, one for nearly every major facet of my life until I gave up. Why? Because it really doesn't matter where I put Org TODOs and their notes. When I need to locate something, Org provides a way to search entries for a regular expression, which is what grep does, sans all that Unixy CLI stuff.

So faced with the task of paying one of my wife's medical bills, I could agonize over whether to put the task into wife.org or bills.org or medical.org.² Or I could just:

• establish the task somewhere,
• act on it
• link to a receipt
• mark it done³

I created a special template for org-capture, which places these one-off tasks into todo.org. And it clocks into the task, too.

A topic with even greater complexity is "education." I'm a lifelong learner; my edu.org file has (only) 29 headings, all of which have at least a few subheadings. If I learn about an Emacs feature, I might want to write about it, so I'll put a task into blog.org that links to it.

Occasionally a post will span multiple topics in edu.org, topics such as Emacs, Vivaldi, LibreOffice, HTML or LaTeX. In a year from now, which file should I look for it in? The keystroke C-c a s comes to the rescue.⁴ I might search for "Sacha" because all I remember is that I discovered an Emacs feature on Sacha's website.⁵ Incidentally, I get 13 hits when I search for "Sacha," one of which was the one I had in mind.

The question I think all Emacs users face is, "At what point does tweaking Emacs (and self-quantifying tools in general) tip the scales from aiding our progress to impeding it?" I dread going down a Knowledge Management rabbit hole,⁶ but I'm sure I'll enjoy the leap.

⁰ Charlie Holland's Search for Knowledge

¹ A tree works like your brain.

² Don't even get me started on insurance.

³ All of this occurs while clocked in to the task.

⁴ In this case, C-c a is bound to org-agenda.

⁵ Sacha Chua's blog

⁶ Can one gain knowledge of Knowledge Management Systems without having a Knowledge Management System in which to record that knowledge? That may be a Zen koan for someone.

Vakana -- Sneak a Peek

I installed Donovan Ratefison's brand-new Vakana app¹ on my Android device this morning. After following the tutorial, I exported the thread as an Org-mode-compatible package in a ZIP and emailed it to myself in order to transfer it to my desktop.

After opening the Org file that Vakana generated, I exported the entire buffer to HTML. The result is shown below. The only change I wanted to make was to scale the bead of each heading 25%.²

It's fortuitous that Donovan Ratefison released Vakana in a month whose Emacs Carnival theme is "The Search for Knowledge," because Vakana provides a unique way to manage one's knowledge. I'll need to become proficient in it before adding it to my workflow. So my eventual Emacs Carnival submission will be more pedestrian.

---

¹ Learn about Vakana here or download here.

² The images used for beads are SVG files. However this blogging platform does not support that file type, so I converted them to GIF for this post. This should explain why they don't look awesome.

Your first thread
A 90-second tour. Walk it bead by bead, then make it yours — delete it, or reload it anytime from Settings → Pro Tips.

Table of Contents

• 1. The thread
• 2. Start here · a 90-second tour
• 3. 1/5 · Tap the bead
• 4. 2/5 · Open the thread
• 5. 3/5 · Comment — swipe me right
  • 5.1. Comments
    • 5.1.1. Comment — [2026-08-09 Sun 18:50]
• 6. 4/5 · Long-press a bead in the list
  • 6.1. Comments
    • 6.1.1. Comment — [2026-08-09 Sun 18:22]
    • 6.1.2. Comment — [2026-08-09 Sun 19:14]
• 7. 5/5 · Close it, then make it yours

1. The thread

2. Start here · a 90-second tour

[2026-08-09 Sun]

Welcome — and if this is all new, that’s perfectly fine. We’ll go gently.

Vakana is the Malagasy word for beads — there’s no other word for them in the language, and it’s where this app takes its name. The idea is old and simple: you turn a moment into a small bead — a little coloured token — and beads you keep together form a thread you can walk back along, like beads on a string. (These six notes are already a thread — “Your first thread.”)

That’s the whole shape of it. What a bead means is always yours — the app never decides that for you.

This is a short, hands-on tour: five steps, each one a thing you try yourself.

Next → 1/5 · Tap the bead.

3. 1/5 · Tap the bead

[2026-08-08 Sat]

,*Tap the bead* at the top of this note — the composer opens. That’s where you pick a bead’s shape, pattern, mood-colour and a tiny glyph (this one’s is the number 1️⃣).

Eight shapes, eight patterns, eight moods — small enough to learn, wide enough for anything. There’s no legend: a circle isn’t “an encounter” unless you decide it is.

How does the user navigate the beads? Now I see "< Prev" and "Next >" so it's obvious.

Next → 2/5 · Open the thread.

4. 2/5 · Open the thread

[2026-08-07 Fri]

You’re on a thread right now — a chain of beads strung together on purpose. Open “Your first thread” (tap its chip here, or find it in the Threads view) and you’ll see all six beads in a row you can walk, bead by bead.

The app also keeps a quiet thread for every day you write, under Days in the Threads view — built for you, no effort.

Next → 3/5 · Comment.

5. 3/5 · Comment — swipe me right

[2026-08-06 Thu]

Some thoughts arrive after the moment. Instead of rewriting a note, leave a comment in its margin.

Try it: tap the 💬 at the top of this note — or, back in your list, swipe this row to the right. Either opens the margin, where you can jot a thought or even set it to remind you later.

(The next bead, 4️⃣, already has a comment — spot the 💬 on its row.)

Next → 4/5 · Long-press the bead.

5.1. Comments

5.1.1. Comment — [2026-08-09 Sun 18:50]

The tutorial shows an icon for comment as a white-filled rectangular balloon with three dots. However the actual icon is a balloon that's an empty circle

6. 4/5 · Long-press a bead in the list

[2026-08-05 Wed]

Beads repeat, and you’ll want to find a bead’s kin. This is a thing you do from your list, not from inside a note — so head back to the list first.

There, press and hold any bead: the list instantly filters to every bead like it. (Long-press is the move most people miss.)

Want finer control? Tap the funnel at the top of the list to filter by shape, mood, pattern or glyph, then gather the results into a brand-new thread.

Next → 5/5 · Make it yours.

6.1. Comments

6.1.1. Comment — [2026-08-09 Sun 18:22]

I keep coming back to this one — long-pressing a bead is the move most people miss.

6.1.2. Comment — [2026-08-09 Sun 19:14]

The alarm clock icon next to the note field is for a reminder, not a timestamp. It puts it on the next business day at 9:00 a.m., perhaps. I pressed it at 3:00 p.m. on Sunday August 9th, and then entered the reminder for the next day at 9:00 a.m..

7. 5/5 · Close it, then make it yours

[2026-08-04 Tue]

This thread is closed — notice the clasp. Closing marks a loop that finished; you can reopen it anytime.

A finished thread can leave the app: open it and Export to turn it into a web page or a slide deck.

That’s the whole grammar — bead, thread, comment, close, export. Now make it yours:

• Delete this tour — swipe any note left, or remove it in one tap from Settings → Pro Tips → Interactive tutorial. • Want it back later? Reload from the same place.

Now write your first real moment, and bead it however you like.

Created: 2026-08-09 Sun 16:42

Validate

Dedicate an Emacs Window to Its Buffer

Before I start writing in Org, I dedicate the window. This "protects" the content, preventing it from being replaced by something else. It ensures I can stay focused on my writing no matter what other buffers Emacs opens.

My usual workflow is to display help on the functions I write about. Emacs opens the help buffer in another window. That's good. But then if I click on the link to the source code that help references, that file will open in my writing window, and I lose focus. Dedicating the window prevents this.

I could dedicate a window manually by invoking toggle-window-dedicated (bound to C-x w d) every time I start writing. But because I clock in to anything I'm serious about, I let org-clock-in-hook to do it for me as shown below. Note that the hook calls set-window-dedicated-p rather than toggle-window-dedicated because the latter will un-dedicate a window that's already dedicated. I could configure org-clock-out-hook to un-dedicate the window; I'm debating whether it's necessary.

(add-hook 'org-clock-in-hook (lambda () (set-window-dedicated-p nil t)))

Interestingly, while I was writing this, JTR published his "Gems" article in which he writes about setting help-window-keep-selected to true "to keep help in its own dedicated window, so it won’t open in a separate window once we follow a link."¹ Perhaps that’s his approach to the same issue.

---

¹ Emacs Config Gems - Part 3

Display Active Clock in Emacs Frame Title

I thought it would be helpful to modify the title of the Emacs frame to display the Org task I'm clocked in to. It turns out to be a lot easier than it sounds -- just change one Org variable in Customize.

The variable is org-clock-clocked-in-display. Its default value is mode-line. This means that the active clock displays only in the mode line. But it can have one of three other values: nil, frame title, both.

I've set it to both. Now the clocked task displays in both the mode line and the frame title. It shows the clock duration in square brackets followed by the task heading in parentheses, as shown below.

This simple update has improved my productivity significantly. The prominent display of the clocked task reminds me of what I started to do before I went down yet another rabbit. Not that rabbit holes are all bad -- I was in a rabbit hole yesterday when I found org-clock-clocked-in-display.

Try it out!

One Space or Two?

HTML enforces the use of a single space to separate sentences. If you want to add another space, you need to use  . I still remember how annoyed I was about that. Back in the century in which I took my technical writing course, two spaces were required. Of course, we weren't using computers very often; hand-written sentences needed to appear more separated than the words within.

I'm definitely not here to convince anyone to switch. Instead, I just want to share that I paid close attention to this detail when I was formulating my style guide for this blog. Should I continue with my out-of-date two-space habit? Or should I adopt the current convention?

I turned to Emacs itself for guidance. It turns out that the individuals who wrote Emacs comments, docstrings and help text used two spaces. Although many times they started each sentence on a new line.

It turns out that the content here mostly is one-space. I start out using two spaces in Org where most of this originates. But when I export to HTML, that second space vaporizes. That would seem like a bug to me.

The only place where you'll see evidence of my two-space style is in the comments and docstrings of my source code.

Am I the only person who nit picks about such details?

---

Thanks to Irreal for highlighting a customization from macosguru

Emacs Smiley Functions

Here's what my Emacs Tip of the Day dug up: smiley-buffer

Better Than Bookmarklets

The earliest web browsers didn't allow users to create custom search engines. Instead, you had to navigate to a website before searching. Or, you could use the browser's search engine to search for selected text.

That's when I started using a bookmarklet to search my public library's catalog for selected text. Before then I had to...

• Select the text
• Copy it to the clipboard
• Open a new browser tab or window
• Navigate to the library website
• Paste the text into the search field
• Press Enter

The bookmarklet reduced six steps to two. The process shrank to just:

• Select text
• Click the bookmarklet

And it preserved the clipboard.

So is the bookmarklet outdated like the dial-up modem? I think it is for most applications.

You might argue, "Bookmarklets can do more than pass selected text to a website's search tool. They can execute code."

True. For example, suppose you came across a website that announced the date of the next EmacsConf.¹ How many days away is that? A bookmarklet can tell you. All you'd have to do is to select that date (December 12) and then click the bookmarklet. Of course, you'd first have to write the code, but that's the really fun part.

But my counterargument is that you don't need code. You could create a custom search engine that asks an online AI chat tool to calculate the time span with the following three-part URL:

1. The AI chat tool's query URL²
2. The question "How+many+days+away+is+"
3. The search-term placeholder (usually %s)

Putting it all together gives you: https://lumo.proton.me/?q=How+many+days+away+is+%s³

To test this, I'll substitute "December 12" for %s and navigate to that URL: https://lumo.proton.me/?q=How+many+days+away+is+December%2012. Lumo inferred the missing year, chose the upcoming December 12 (2026), and calculated that it was 135 days away.

A bookmarklet could certainly do the same thing, but it would need code to infer the missing year or present multiple results. An AI already understands the ambiguity.

But what if your bookmarklet isn't provided with a date? What if it's given the name of an obscure holiday, such as "Talk Like a Pirate Day?" ⁴ AI can do this! Substituting "Talk Like a Pirate Day" for %s would make the URL https://lumo.proton.me/?q=How+many+days+away+is+Talk+Like+a+Pirate+Day. The response is, "Talk Like a Pirate Day is 51 days away! 🏴‍☠️" The pirate flag is a nice embellishment, isn't it?

Combined with an AI chat tool, a custom search engine can replace many bookmarklets while requiring little or no custom code.

---

¹ https://emacsconf.org/2026/

² I've chosen Proton's online AI tool because it's the first tool I found that submits the query immediately, without waiting for the user to press Enter or click the upload button.

³ Notice that I've replaced space characters in the question with "+" and encoded the space in the selected text with the percent-encoded value %20.

⁴ September 19, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Talk_Like_a_Pirate_Day

How to Copy the Link at Point -- an Undocumented Feature in EWW

If you've ever written an Emacs function only to find out that it was there all along, masquerading as something else, this post is for you.

I just finished writing an Emacs function that copies the link at point to the kill ring in EWW. It will remain unpublished. Why? Because I discovered that shr-maybe-probe-and-copy-url (bound to u and w in eww-mode) does the same thing. Just position point on a link and invoke it.

It's not obvious that pressing w will do this. In fact the major mode help for eww-mode suggests that w will not copy the link because it's bound to eww-copy-page-url. But it turns out that if point is on a link, w will invoke shr-maybe-probe-and-copy-url, "which copies this link's URL to the kill ring." The manual goes on to say, "If point is not on a link, pressing w calls eww-copy-page-url, which will copy the current page's URL to the kill ring instead."¹

Before writing my function I had been looking through the mode help (C-h m from within a EWW buffer) and the EWW source code for any function that looked like copy-link-at-point.

So how did I find out about this? I wanted to ensure that I was following the standard for capitalizing EWW, so I searched the web. This took me to the GNU Emacs manual, which has a section on EWW and shows it in all caps. But then my distractibility encouraged me to read a great deal more.

I've known that keybindings can change depending on the major mode. But it seems a keybinding can change based on context (i.e. the position of point). This idea is new to me. Maybe it's common for a function to "hand off" to another based on context. But in this case it seems irresponsible to omit documentation for the alternate behavior of a w key press. Suppose a user expects to copy the page URL and gets the URL of a link, instead?

While this was a frustrating experience, it is yet another reminder to RTFM. WDYT?

¹ GNU Emacs EWW Basic Usage

The Problem With Tags Lists

A Tags List is an alternative to the Agenda that the user can configure with org-agenda-custom-commands. The list shows subheadings that have a certain tag. You can edit these list items with the same commands used for the item on the standard Agenda View. For example, you can invoke org-agenda-todo (bound to t) while on a tag list item to change its TODO state. However, the display doesn't always reflect the action that was performed. That can mislead the user into thinking the command had no effect.

For example, you can change an item's TODO state to DONE. When you do that for an Agenda item, usually Org Agenda removes the item from the Agenda. However, that doesn't happen to an item on a Tags List. The TODO keyword changes to DONE, but the item remains visible. However, if it's a recurring task, the state will remain at "TODO" as if nothing happened. That's because Org reverts the state back to TODO after advancing the date in accordance with the repeater.

The lack of visual feedback can lead the user to invoke the command a second time. Then the item's deadline (or schedule) will be advanced more than once, skipping the next reminder.

Here's a real world example. Suppose the TODO item is a reminder to pay the rent. It's set up with a +1m repeater so that it shows up monthly. The user pays the rent and marks it done. The deadline advances to the next month, which is fine. But nothing changes on the Tags List -- the TODO item is still there. Then the user becomes distracted¹ and forgets that "Pay the Rent" was marked DONE, and so the user marks it DONE again. The deadline advances another month, so the reminder for next month's rent never appears.

A slightly better approach is to filter the Agenda View with org-agenda-tag-filter-preset to avoid generating a Tags List. But I found it tricky to use. I couldn't figure out how to use Customize to include it in one of my org-agenda-custom-commands. Instead I edited my init file to change the custom command from:

;; Dangerous!
("Bm" "Bills for the Month (Recurring)" agenda "Bills"
 ((org-agenda-span 'month) (org-agenda-files '("~/bills.org"))))

…to:

;; Less Dangerous
("Bm" "Bills for the Month (Recurring)" agenda ""
 ((org-agenda-tag-filter-preset '("+bills") nil)))

This is a better approach because when marked DONE, an item's TODO status changes to DONE even if it had a repeater, so the user has a clear indication of its status. Unfortunately, this isn't ideal because the date of the deadline doesn't advance according to the repeater; it's necessary to edit the org file manually to change DONE to TODO and then mark it DONE using org-todo² (which enacts the repeater).

If there were such a thing as org-agenda-todo-before-hook, I'd add a call to org-agenda-check-type and abort if it returned anything other than agenda.

Another approach is to disable org-agenda-todo. I tried it. It works, but it's annoying.

My eventual solution was to modify org-agenda-todo in org-agenda.el³ so that it aborts unless the item is an agenda item. The only required change was adding (org-agenda-check-type nil 'agenda) to the begining of the function. Now when I invoke org-agenda-todo on an item in a Tags List, Emacs responds with "Not allowed in `tags'-type agenda buffer or component." Perfect!

(defun org-agenda-todo (&optional arg)
  "Cycle TODO state of line at point, also in Org file.
This changes the line at point, all other lines in the agenda referring to
the same tree node, and the headline of the tree node in the Org file."
  (interactive "P")
  (org-agenda-check-no-diary)
  (org-agenda-check-type t 'agenda) ;; add this!
  (org-agenda-maybe-loop
   #'org-agenda-todo arg nil nil
   (let* ((col (current-column))

Although this is only a one-line change, it's a good example of why I appreciate Free and Open Source Software (FOSS). Users have the freedom to choose how it operates! In a sense, we're all owners and collaborators. And even if you're not able to make the change on your own, you're part of a supportive community that will help you.

Is there something that irks you about Emacs? Have you asked for help on how to change it? Let's do that now!

---

¹ The hypothetical user is me.

² org-todo operates within org files; org-agenda-todo works from within the Agenda.

³ When modifying an Emacs source file, save a backup of the original and rename the corresponding .elc file. Otherwise Emacs will continue loading the compiled version, making it appear that your changes had no effect. Recompile the modified source if desired.

Modeling Browser History in Emacs

If there were an underappreciated web browser feature, it would be this: history.

On many browsers, history is invoked with C-h (Ctrl+h). Vivaldi shows history as a calendar. The user can choose from time intervals of Day, Week or Month and search for a keyword within that time interval.¹

I tend to write about a topic after I've forgotten where I read about it. Suppose I recall reading about "nslookup" but can't remember when or where. Simple. Vivaldi remembered that I visited a page with "nslookup" on Windows Central on July 3 at 21:26. Being able to find such references helps.

History helped me track my hours when my employer required bi-weekly timesheets. I would combine browser history with Org's clock report to get a result I was actually proud to submit.

I still track my time with Org, which stores start and stop times in a drawer called LOGBOOK. But I tend to forget to start or stop the clock, so the times are unreliable. Sometimes a file's timestamp can help me reconstruct the LOGBOOK. But at times like these I'd wish that Emacs had a history feature.

Actually Emacs does have a few history-like features. One example is savehist-mode,² which "save[s] the values of minibuffer history variables." Unfortunately, timestamps are not included.

So I configured Emacs to write a timestamp to the *Messages* buffer every time it loads or saves a file. This frees me from switching to a file manager to check a file's timestamp. Using Customize, I added functions to find-file-hook and after-save-hook:³

(find-file-hook
 '(lambda nil
     (message "%s: Loaded %s"
              (format-time-string "%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S" (current-time))
              (buffer-file-name))))
(after-save-hook
 '(lambda nil
    (message "%s: Saved %s"
             (format-time-string "%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S" (current-time))
             (buffer-file-name))))

Whenever I realize I'm not clocked in, I visit the *Messages* buffer and look for the first occurrence of something like this:

2026-07-20 12:32:33: Saved c:/Users/RayZ/AppData/Roaming/HOME/blog.org

Then I clock in and change the start time to 12:33.⁴

Similarly, if I've been away from the computer and realize I'm still clocked in, I'll look for the last occurrence of the message, clock out, and change the time accordingly.

The *Messages* buffer is temporary; timestamps from an earlier Emacs session are lost. But this simple system does what I need.

What methods do you use to track project time?

---

¹ The user also can view history as a simple list in reverse chronological order. And the search can span the entire history, if desired.

² https://doc.endlessparentheses.com/Fun/savehist-mode.html

³ Note that these expressions are arguments to custom-set-variables.

⁴ Timesheets required time entries in units of hours rounded to one decimal. A tenth hour is 6 minutes. So I configured Org to round clock times to 3 minutes by setting org-clock-rounding-minutes to 3. This affords more granularity. With several clock entries per heading, an even number of 0:03 clock entries would produce the desired tenth hour accuracy.

Emacs Tip Of The Day in a Popup Frame

The Emacs commands that create a new frame disappoint me. They create a frame that shares the same set of buffers as the main frame. I don't think a Tip Of The Day (TOTD) popup should have access to all the buffers in a session. I want a popup to display some help and be easily dismissed.¹

That's why I designed my Tip Of The Day to run in a separate Emacs instance. Instead of invoking the TOTD function directly, Emacs asks the operating system to launch a second Emacs process. One of the command line switches loads the Lisp file in which the TOTD function is defined, and another runs the function. This is achieved by invoking call-process-shell-command to run a one-line batch file² that contains this:

"path_to_emacs\emacs.exe" -Q -g 80x42-2+2 -l totd.el --eval (ztotd)

The -l switch loads totd.el, defining both totd and ztotd. The --eval switch then invokes ztotd. (The other function, totd is not used; it's retained for reference.) The -Q switch starts Emacs "quietly." -g defines window geometries:³ WxH+X+Y, where

• W and H specify the frame's width and height in character units.
• X and Y, if ≥0, specify the pixel coordinates of the upper left corner of the window. If <0, specify the distance from the right and bottom of the screen.

This is the statement in my init file that runs the batch file:

(call-process-shell-command "cmd.exe /Q /D /C invoke-emacs-totd.bat" nil 0)

Here's the listing for totd.el. The first function, totd, is based on code that Dave Pearson posted on EmacsWiki.⁴ To make it work with modern Emacs, I replaced (require 'cl) with (require 'cl-lib) and (loop for s...) with (cl-loop for s...).

;; Time-stamp: "2026-07-19 17:00:17 RayZ"
;; totd.el by DavePearson
;; This small code snippet displays a “tip of the day”
;;
;; 2026-07-14 Downloaded from https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/TipOfTheDay
;; 2026-07-19 Derive ztotd to run in separate session

(require 'cl-lib)

(defun totd ()
 (interactive)
 (with-output-to-temp-buffer "*Tip of the day*"
   (let* ((commands (cl-loop for s being the symbols
                          when (commandp s) collect s))
          (command (nth (random (length commands)) commands)))
     (princ
      (concat "Your tip for the day is:\n========================\n\n"
              (describe-function command)
              "\n\nInvoke with:\n\n"
              (with-temp-buffer
                (where-is command t)
                (buffer-string)))))))

(defun ztotd ()
  "Display documentation of a random Emacs function to provide
a Tip Of The Day.  It is intended to run in a separate
session of Emacs where it modifies the frame to resemble a
minimalist popup.  Invoke at the command line with (for example):

  emacs.exe -Q -g 80x42-2+2 -l totd.el --eval (ztotd)"
 (interactive)
 (set-buffer (generate-new-buffer "Tip of the day"))
   (let* ((commands (cl-loop for s being the symbols
                          when (commandp s) collect s))
          (command (nth (random (length commands)) commands)))
     (insert
      (concat (describe-function command)
              "\n\nInvoke with:\n\n"
              (with-temp-buffer
                (where-is command t)
                (buffer-string))))
     (tool-bar-mode 0)
     (menu-bar-mode 0)
     (setq frame-title-format '("Gnu Emacs Tip of the day"))
     (pop-to-buffer (current-buffer))
     (goto-char (point-min))
     (delete-other-windows)
     (message "Press C-x C-c to dismiss")))

totd is very intrusive by design -- it's supposed to put a help page "in your face." But I wanted a "clean" look. So I eliminated the toolbar and menu from the frame, moved "Tip of the Day" from the buffer to the title, and got rid of other windows. Plus I call it with call-process-shell-command instead of shell-command to prevent a shell output window from appearing in the main frame.⁵

The batch file allows the OS itself to initiate the display of TOTD. It can be set up to run right after logon, or combined with Tea Timer or Scheduler for a periodic display.

I like how this performs. However, I hardly ever close and restart Emacs. As a result, I may go a week or two without seeing a tip. Is that why Emacs has never included a built-in Tip Of The Day? Or is it just so easy to implement that "the proof has been left as an exercise to the user?" Or maybe the help that's shown is too specific. For example, "What does image-dired-delete-tag actually do?" you might wonder. I think that's the whole point of a TOTD -- to inspire wonder!

If you try this on a non-Windows system, please let me know whether it works.

---

¹ I tried display-buffer-pop-up-frame. Somehow the popup lost focus and got buried behind the main frame. When I closed the main frame, I thought that all my files were saved and Emacs was closed. Only then did I realize the popup was still running. When I tried to close it, Emacs warned about open files. So nervously I maximized the small popup frame to review the unsaved buffers.

² In fact the batch file contains several lines of comments, too, as well as the cherished @echo off statement at the very beginning. @echo off prevents the many lines of comments from getting dumped to standard output; otherwise those comments would end up in a shell buffer.

³ For more information on command line switches for Emacs, see: https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Emacs-Invocation.html

⁴ Please see https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/TipOfTheDay

⁵ Thanks to Jackson Ray Hamilton for this suggestion. https://stackoverflow.com/a/22982525

One Hundred Times the Highest Priority

Please note that org‑get‑cust‑priority has been updated. The code that was published on 2026-07-10 causes org‑tags‑list to crash.

In the previous post,¹ I was disappointed to learn that valid priority characters are limited to 0–9 and A–Z. I thought it would be neat if the exclamation mark ("!") could represent the ultimate priority, a sort of "drop everything and do this immediately" kind of priority.

It turns out that you can use "!" for this purpose, regardless of which priority characters you've configured. The trick is to write a function and assign it to org-priority-get-priority-function.

The function (which I named org-get-cust-priority) simply looks for "!" in the priority cookie and returns one hundred times the value that would be returned by the highest valid priority. If it doesn't find "!" it simply calls a modified version of the usual org-get-property function,² which I named org-get-std-priority. The two functions are shown below.³

(defun org-get-cust-priority (s)
  "Return 100 times the highest priority when S contains
a priority cookie with `!'.  Otherwise call the usual
`org-get-property' function. Intended to be the function
`org-priority-get-priority-function' is set to."
  (interactive)
  (if (not (functionp org-priority-get-priority-function))
      (org-get-std-priority s)
    (string-match ".*?\\(\\[#\\(!\\)\\] ?\\)" s)
    (if (and (string-match ".*?\\(\\[#\\(!\\)\\] ?\\)" s) (string-equal (match-string 2 s) "!"))
        (* 100000 (abs (- org-priority-lowest org-priority-highest)))
      (org-get-std-priority s))))

(defun org-get-std-priority (s)
  "Find priority cookie and return priority.
S is a string against which you can match `org-priority-regexp'.
Same function as `org-get-priority' sans test for a custom
function in `org-priority-get-priority-function'."
  (save-match-data
    (if (not (string-match org-priority-regexp s))
        (* 1000 (- org-priority-lowest org-priority-default))
      (* 1000 (- org-priority-lowest
                 (org-priority-to-value (match-string 2 s)))))))

The number that Org uses to sort on priority depends on the values of org-priority-lowest and org-priority-highest,⁴ which are "C" and "A" by default. In the default configuration, the highest priority has a numeric value of 2000, while the lowest has a value of 0. If the highest and lowest priority characters are 1 and 9, respectively, the highest priority has a value of 8000.

You know you need this if you have about a dozen items on your agenda and half of them are prioritized A.

---

2026-08-13 Update org-get-cust-priority. Previous version breaks org-tags-list.

¹ https://ray-on-emacs.blogspot.com/2026/07/numeric-priorities-in-org-mode.html
² Modified just to prevent recursion.
³ I know this code isn't particuarly elegant. I could have made custom variables for "!" and the priority multiplier, for example. I'd like to use it for a while before deciding whether it's worth investing any more effort. I do welcome suggestions on how to improve.
⁴ Or rather, the difference between the highest and lowest priorities.

Numeric Priorities in Org Mode

Org mode is configured "out-of-the-box" with these three levels of priority: A, B, C, where A is the highest priority. However, this can be changed. You can use numbers to indicate priority, such as 1 (highest) to 10 (lowest) as shown in the documentation.¹

If you specify priorities from 65 to 90, Org will interpret the numbers as ordinal values of ASCII characters and give you "A" to "Z." If you try to be clever and specify priorities as 65 to 91 (91 is the decimal ASCII code for left square bracket character) you'll be disappointed that when you lower the priority from "Z," you don't get "[." (I was disappointed, anyway.)

You can define priorities from 10 to 99, for example. But if you try to get to a priority higher than 10 using org-priority-up, Org will clear the priority cookie. However, you can manually enter a priority of 0 to ensure the item appears above all other items. (Please see Figure 1, below.) Thus, a priority value of 0 can be your "stat" item. It would be super neat if Org could understand that ASCII characters below 0 (such as the exclamation mark) are an even higher priority than 0. Unfortunately, it doesn't even recognize [#!] as a priority cookie.

A large priority span seems like it would be useful. For example, you might have all utility bills set from 50 to 59, and shopping for birthday or anniversary gifts from 10 to 19. However, in order to go from a priority of 50 to 10, you'd have to press the Up Arrow key forty times. If you think you can invoke M-4 0 M-x org-priority-up to go quickly from 50 to 10, you'll be disappointed (again). The function org-priority-up doesn't accept a prefix argument.²

How do you use priority in Org?

---

¹ Org Manual -- Priorities

² But you can record a macro that consists of a single S-<up> key press and then play it back with a prefix argument of 39.

Configure Web Browser to be More Emacs-like

Emacs, LibreOffice Writer and Vivaldi are the productivity tools I use most often. So I like to incorporate a feature from one into the others. One example is the ability to initiate a search from selected text. I added this feature to LibreOffice as described here. Another nice feature is the ability to switch between the current buffer and the next (or previous) buffer with C-<TAB> and C-S-<TAB> that I added to Emacs¹.

But I've also configured Vivaldi with a useful Emacs feature. Now it responds to C-S-k by invoking "Close tabs to the Right." Emacs devotees know that C-k is bound to kill-line, which "Kill[s] the rest of the current line...."² If you imagine that the row of tabs is a line of text, it's natural to expect C-k (or C-S-k) would remove all the tabs to the right of the current tab.

Why did I choose the key combination C-S-k instead of C-k? I think at the time C-k performed another function. Or perhaps I felt that it was more appropriate to use two modifier keys for such a significant operation. I rarely need to delete tabs to the left; if I did, I'd bind C-M-S-k to "Close tabs to the Left."

You might utter the following complaint, "But C-S-k doesn't work for Gmail; it brings up a virtual keyboard instead!" Correct. So while we're on the topic of Vivaldi key configurations, I'd like to point out that it's possible to tell Vivaldi to ignore a website's key assignment, allowing the key to pass to Vivaldi. Just search for the setting "Browser Priority Shortcuts," click on one of the existing key combinations and press C-S-k to add it to the others.

I rely on the web browser's tab history a great deal, too. I'm working on implementing something vaguely similar for Emacs."

---

¹ To get the C-<TAB> and C-S-<TAB> to switch buffers, just add this to your init file:

  (keymap-global-set "C-<tab>" 'next-buffer)
  (keymap-global-set "C-S-<tab>" 'previous-buffer)

² https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Killing-by-Lines.html

Comment on Org Source Blocks

Yesterday I wrote that I prefer putting each code snippet into its own dedicated file rather than into an org source block because "I don't want the code to execute with org-mode active."

What was I thinking; what does it mean?

Here's a scenario. I'm developing functions to create a document in some markup language. The colorizer function applies a color tag to the first word in a given string.

It works great in my Org source block. But when I add it to the lisp file and invoke it, it doesn't do exactly what I expect.

In Org mode, the single quote is a word constituent, which is fine for my purpose. However, in emacs-lisp-mode, single quote is a separator. The effect is demonstrated below. Note the code in the testre.el file tags only "Sophia," not "Sophia's," while the source block applies the tag as intended.

(defun colorizer (s)
  "Add blue color tag to first word in S."
  (interactive)
  (replace-regexp-in-string "\\(\\w+\\)\\(.+\\)" "blue{\\1}\\2" s t))

(defun testre ()
  "Test colorizer."
  (interactive)
  (message
   (concat
    (colorizer "Blanche lives in Miami.")
    " "
    (colorizer "Sofia's sweater is yellow."))))

(testre)

#+RESULTS:
: blue{Blanche} lives in Miami. blue{Sofia’s} sweater is yellow.

Here's what the code in the testre.el file produces:

  blue{Blanche} lives in Miami. blue{Sofia}’s sweater is yellow.

Another problem with having Org mode active in a lisp source block is that indenting doesn't work as expected. Pressing C-M-\ does nothing (if I'm lucky) or something undesirable. Once I activate emacs-lisp-mode, C-M-\ makes the code look nice again. (If I re-activate Org mode the buffer reloads, and I lose my place in the document.) This makes sense when you recall that C-M-\ is bound to indent-according-to-mode.

I'm sure I'm doing something wrong, or I have something misconfigured.

Emacs Carnival July 2026 -- Programming

I don't think of Emacs as an IDE or even a programming environment unless I'm writing Lisp to automate Emacs. Instead, I consider Emacs to be a text editor with some useful extras.

Syntax highlighting (font-lock-mode) is a nice extra. It might seem strange that I consider syntax highlighting to be an extra. If you've used a text editor 40 years ago, you'll understand why -- text editors didn't have the feature. Syntax highlighting was the purview of the compiler tool. My first experience with syntax highlighting was with Borland Turbo Pascal; I used Borland Turbo C soon after. (I think Borland's Turbo Assembler, TASM, had the feature, too.)

According to packages-selected-packages, these are the programming modes I have configured:

• basic-mode
• csv-mode
• gnuplot
• matlab-mode
• powershell
• python and python-mode
• Swift mode

I don't program in Swift. Perhaps the package is a dependency for another mode. Or maybe I was ambitious one day and thought I'd try another programming language.

Is csv a programming language? If you automate the generation of spreadsheets. it's nice to have some help. But to be honest, I've not used it very often.

Easy access to shell is another nice extra. I have two functions to make use of it when I write batch files. They execute either the current line (exeln) or the entire buffer (shellfn) with some sort of shell command; they are shown below. The Windows binary uses cmdproxy.exe from MinGW -- it works out-of-the-box. But I use the Windows start program for shellfn because it invokes the correct executable based on the file's extension. Thus, Python runs a .py file; cmd, a .bat; Octave, a .m file.

;; This is bound to C-c x
;; Many thanks to Sebastián Monía for suggesting many improvements
(defun exeln (arg)
  "Execute  current line as a shell command.
With prefix ARG, run asynchronously."
  (interactive "P")
  (funcall (if arg
               #'async-shell-command
             #'shell-command)
           (thing-at-point 'line t)))

;; This is bound to C-c s
(defun shellfn ()
  "Invokes the shell using the current buffer file name as a parameter."
  (interactive)
  (shell-command (concat "start " (buffer-file-name))))

I've tried to use source blocks in Org, but I prefer putting each code snippet into its own dedicated file. Why? One reason is because I don't want the code to execute with org-mode active. Another reason is that indentation doesn't work properly. Switching modes fixes both issues, but it gets annoying very quickly. This is a topic for another post.

I look forward to seeing how other folks use Emacs for programming.

Circumvent LibreOffice Macros with Templates

Instead of writing LibreOffice macros to change a default behavior, consider customizing the default template.

Creating macros is fun for me. But I agree, automating LibreOffice with macros is daunting, and the recorder is a poor way to begin writing code.¹

Recently I wanted to change the default anchor position of an image. When I insert an image by pasting, I want its anchor is to be "As Character" as opposed to paragraph, which was the current default.

I tried to record the process:

• Paste
• F4 (properties)
• As Character
• OK
• Press Enter

The recorder captured the Paste and Enter keys well. Unfortunately, it choked on the macro's primary element -- applying the As Character property.

But then I wondered, "Can the default anchor position be set to "As Character" in Options?" "No, it cannot," I answered.² "But you can change it in the default template. Here's how:"

• Start LibreOffice Writer. This should present a new, blank document. But if it doesn't, press Ctrl+N.
• Press Alt+2 to open the Styles sidebar.
• Click the Frame Styles icon. (Please see Figure 1, Frame Styles below.)



Figure 1 -- Frame Styles



• Right click on Graphics and choose Edit Style... as shown in Figure 2.



Figure 2 -- Edit Graphics Style



• Choose "Type" on the left. Its icon looks an anchor.
• Under Anchor, click the radio button next to As character.
• Review the other settings and change whatever other defaults that don't make sense to you. I recommend clicking the checkbox to lock Height to Width (aka Aspect Ratio in other applications). Mine was unchecked, and I always found myself clicking it.
• Choose File | Templates | Save as Template as shown in Figure 3. Note this is different from doing File | Save As and then choosing the OTT file type. And yes, you will be saving the image in the template, but it can be removed later.



Figure 3 -- Save as Template Menu Selection



• Enter a name for the template. I entered DEMO for this How-To, but I tend to give my templates more description names that include the paper size, such as "4 x 6 index card" or "5 x 7 greeting card LS."
• Choose a category to enable the Save button.
• Click the checkbox labeled "Set as default template" to ensure that every subsequent new Writer document will be derived from the new template.
• Note that these three choices (Name, Category, Default) can be changed in the Template Manager (Ctrl+Shift+N). The dialog should look similar to the one in Figure 4, below.





Figure 4 -- The Save Template Dialog Box




• Press Ctrl+N to create a new document. Paste an image into it to test the new template. Hopefully³ you'll get the desired result.

---

¹ "When the macro recorder is not able to solve a specific problem, the usual solution is to write code using the OpenOffice.org objects. Unfortunately, there is a steep learning curve for the OOo objects."
² Sometimes I gain insight into a problem by splitting myself into student and teacher.
³ I write "Hopefully" because as I repeated these steps to test them, I managed to obliterate my own default template. And I couldn't seem to fix it without restarting Writer.

Create Date Books, Planners and Calendars with Emacs

Diary was my pick for this month's Emacs Carnival. But in fact it's part of a larger set of functions under the calendar group. Another set of functions allows you to create pocket date books, desk planners and wall calendars if you have access to a printer. The function names begin with cal-tex-cursor and cal-html-cursor, and they can be found in cal-tex.el and cal-html.el, respectively.

The "tex" and "html" in the function names describe the output formats, LaTeX and, well, HTML; "cursor" describes one way of defining their inputs (from the position of the cursor in the calendar buffer). They're further subdivided into layouts such as day, week, month and year. My favorite is cal-tex-cursor-week-iso.

Open the calendar (M-x calendar). Observe that the cursor is at today. Now invoke cal-html-cursor-month and accept the default at the prompt. The function will create a file named YYYY-MM.html. The variable cal-html-directory provides the cal-html functions with the path name. The HTML file is placed in a subdirectory named YYYY. In my case, cal-html-directory is set to "~/public_html." As I invoke it today, the subdirectory / filename is 2026/2026-06.html.

The calendar can pull information from your diary file(s), the holidays defined in holidays.el and in the holiday-other-holidays variable. If you have %%(diary-sunrise-sunset) and %%(diary-lunar-phases) you'll get the times of sunrise and sunset at your coordinates, and the dates and times of the four lunar phases, assuming that cal-tex-diary is non-nil. (I also have cal-tex-24 non-nil.)

I suggested cal-html-cursor-month because its output is easily viewed (rendered) with a web browser. But I prefer the weekly calendar produced by cal-tex-cursor-week-iso, which outputs in LaTeX.

I've invoked cal-tex-cursor-week-iso with the cursor on June 16. The output is shown in Figure 1 after rendering to PDF with pdflatex. (Note that the screenshot is closely cropped.) There's a lot included here.

First, note that our Third Tuesday of the Month Club meeting (used as an example in a previous post) is shown. This comes from a diary entry; unfortunately org file events are ignored. (The agenda for this week is shown in Figure 2; note the event in red does not appear in the weekly calendar. This is another reason I favor recording appointments in the diary.)

Two other diary entries also are included: a record of when the kitchen cabinets were painted, plus a breakfast meeting with Howard.

Then you'll find two holidays, Islamic New Year and Father's Day. And because I have diary-lunar-phases in my diary, a moon phase also shows up. (I commented out the diary-sunrise-sunset statement because it adds the information to every day of the week, which makes the weekly planner look too cluttered.) Last but not least the Summer Solstice is included as a Sunday holiday along with the time it occurs.

The first line of each day block also shows (right justified) the day number (of the year) and the number of days remaining in the year. The Sunday block is quite crowded; the first line is wrapped, so the day number / days remaining field appears on the next line.

Sadly, any links in the diary that worked in Org Agenda do not work in the LaTeX output. You'll see instead the full syntax of the link, [URL][description] ].

I created an improved version of cal-tex-cursor-week-iso. Here are some of the changes:

• inhibit sunrise/sunset data for all but the first day
• switch to sans-serif font
• color birthdays and anniversaries in blue
• replace the non-ASCII characters (used for Bahai holidays)
• offset left or right to allow for the binding of a year's worth of pages
• more?

I uploaded it to Codeberg, but I need to clean it up a bit before I feel comfortable promoting it.

If you position the cursor on the last day of the year and invoke cal-tex-cursor-week-iso with a prefix argument of 53, you can create the pages for a personalized weekly planner for next year! Try it out!