Any cool uses of Lentic?

Any cool uses of Lentic?

[Tory S. Anderson]

Looking at Lentic[1] it seems like something that has been thought 
out and well developed, but I feel I'm missing awesomeness that I 
know must be there. How is it more than only a shortcut for 
indirect buffers?

Footnotes: 
[1]  https://github.com/phillord/lentic

Re: Any cool uses of Lentic?

[Phillip Lord]

"Tory S. Anderson" <torys.anderson@gmail.com> writes:

> Looking at Lentic[1] it seems like something that has been thought out and
> well developed,

Thank you!

> but I feel I'm missing awesomeness that I know must be there. How is
> it more than only a shortcut for indirect buffers?
>
> Footnotes: [1]  https://github.com/phillord/lentic

The main problem with indirect buffers is that the two buffers share
exactly the same text (in the context of Emacs this also means text
properties which is why they tend to break for multi-modal usage, for
example).

Lentic allows you have text with any relationship you want; I have a
silly example, where the two buffers contain the rot13'd text for each
other. The main use, though, is that you can transform for example text
so that in one buffer it is an entirely valid program, while in the
other it's valid org mode, (or latex or anything else).

I use it for documenting lentic.el itself. You can see the video for how
this appears:

https://vimeo.com/116078853

and the output of this here:

http://homepages.cs.ncl.ac.uk/phillip.lord/lentic/lenticular.html



My motivating use case was to combine Clojure with documentation. Here,
for example is a tutorial on for my Tawny-OWL library:

https://github.com/phillord/tawny-tutorial

which is written in Clojure with comments in asciidoc. The end result of
this (turned into slides) is here:

http://homepages.cs.ncl.ac.uk/jennifer.warrender/swat4ls_2015/2015_swat4ls.html


So, lentic can be a replacement for indirect buffers, can support
multi-modal editing (without needing support for either mode), and can
do a form of literate programming, build directly into the editor.

It's actually surprisingly easy to use and intuitive to use in practice.
It seems to be rather harder to explain what it actually does. I
remember the same being true of internet, hyperlinks and the web, so
with any luck lentic will have the same impact. Not holding my breath
though.

Phil

Re: Any cool uses of Lentic?

[Marco Wahl]

Hi Tory,

> Looking at Lentic[1] it seems like something that has been thought out
> and well developed, but I feel I'm missing awesomeness that I know
> must be there. How is it more than only a shortcut for indirect
> buffers?
>
> Footnotes: [1]  https://github.com/phillord/lentic

I think lentic is really great stuff.

I use lentic for my init.el at https://github.com/marcowahl/.emacs.d.
With lentic I have an additional view on the configuration file as
Orgmode buffer.  The latter allows to structure the file with the
features of Orgmode and export parts as documentation e.g. a
readme-file.

This would not be possible with just use an indirect buffer and switch
on org-mode AFAICS.


Best regards,
-- 
Marco Wahl
GPG: 0x49010A040A3AE6F2

Re: Any cool uses of Lentic?

[tomas]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

On Wed, Apr 27, 2016 at 05:32:58PM +0100, Phillip Lord wrote:
> "Tory S. Anderson" <torys.anderson@gmail.com> writes:
> 
> > Looking at Lentic[1] it seems like something that has been thought out and
> > well developed,
> 
> Thank you!

FWIW, a while ago in the Org mode mailing list somebody wanted to
edit their message buffers as Org mode (and later make Mime messages
out of them containing the Org and an HTML version, courtesy of
org-mime-htmlize).

Lentic was proposed to offer the alternative views (message/org).

But I'm out of my depth somehow, so take with some amount of salt.

- -- t
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Re: Any cool uses of Lentic?

[Phillip Lord]

<tomas@tuxteam.de> writes:

> On Wed, Apr 27, 2016 at 05:32:58PM +0100, Phillip Lord wrote:
>> "Tory S. Anderson" <torys.anderson@gmail.com> writes:
>> 
>> > Looking at Lentic[1] it seems like something that has been thought out and
>> > well developed,
>> 
>> Thank you!
>
> FWIW, a while ago in the Org mode mailing list somebody wanted to
> edit their message buffers as Org mode (and later make Mime messages
> out of them containing the Org and an HTML version, courtesy of
> org-mime-htmlize).
>
> Lentic was proposed to offer the alternative views (message/org).
>
> But I'm out of my depth somehow, so take with some amount of salt.


I haven't tried that yet, but it sounds fun. I shall give it a go.

Phil

Re: Any cool uses of Lentic?

[York Zhao]

This looks pretty interesting, so I decided to give it a go. I then cloned
the
git repo, and ran "$ make". I could see that a .cask directory has been
created,
and the dependencies has been installed in it. I then read the comment in
lentic.el. However, it only mentions the usage when installing through
MELPA/Marmalade which is not my case. Would you please also add usage notes
for
manual installation, like what I'm doing so that I can have everything up
and
running in 15 minutes?

Thanks,


On Thu, Apr 28, 2016 at 11:59 AM, Phillip Lord <phillip.lord@russet.org.uk>
wrote:

> <tomas@tuxteam.de> writes:
>
> > On Wed, Apr 27, 2016 at 05:32:58PM +0100, Phillip Lord wrote:
> >> "Tory S. Anderson" <torys.anderson@gmail.com> writes:
> >>
> >> > Looking at Lentic[1] it seems like something that has been thought
> out and
> >> > well developed,
> >>
> >> Thank you!
> >
> > FWIW, a while ago in the Org mode mailing list somebody wanted to
> > edit their message buffers as Org mode (and later make Mime messages
> > out of them containing the Org and an HTML version, courtesy of
> > org-mime-htmlize).
> >
> > Lentic was proposed to offer the alternative views (message/org).
> >
> > But I'm out of my depth somehow, so take with some amount of salt.
>
>
> I haven't tried that yet, but it sounds fun. I shall give it a go.
>
> Phil
>
>

Re: Any cool uses of Lentic?

[Phillip Lord]

I can do, but it will involve manually installing the dependencies of
lentic also.

Is there a particular reason why you don't want to use a package
installation?

Phil

York Zhao <gtdplatform@gmail.com> writes:

> This looks pretty interesting, so I decided to give it a go. I then
> cloned the git repo, and ran "$ make". I could see that a .cask
> directory has been created, and the dependencies has been installed in
> it. I then read the comment in lentic.el. However, it only mentions
> the usage when installing through MELPA/Marmalade which is not my
> case. Would you please also add usage notes for manual installation,
> like what I'm doing so that I can have everything up and running in 15
> minutes?
>
> Thanks,
>
>
> On Thu, Apr 28, 2016 at 11:59 AM, Phillip Lord <phillip.lord@russet.org.uk>
> wrote:
>
>> <tomas@tuxteam.de> writes:
>>
>> > On Wed, Apr 27, 2016 at 05:32:58PM +0100, Phillip Lord wrote:
>> >> "Tory S. Anderson" <torys.anderson@gmail.com> writes:
>> >>
>> >> > Looking at Lentic[1] it seems like something that has been thought
>> out and
>> >> > well developed,
>> >>
>> >> Thank you!
>> >
>> > FWIW, a while ago in the Org mode mailing list somebody wanted to
>> > edit their message buffers as Org mode (and later make Mime messages
>> > out of them containing the Org and an HTML version, courtesy of
>> > org-mime-htmlize).
>> >
>> > Lentic was proposed to offer the alternative views (message/org).
>> >
>> > But I'm out of my depth somehow, so take with some amount of salt.
>>
>>
>> I haven't tried that yet, but it sounds fun. I shall give it a go.
>>
>> Phil
>>
>>

Re: Any cool uses of Lentic?

[York Zhao]

> it will involve manually installing the dependencies of lentic also.

I thought those dependencies have been installed by cask. So do you mean
that
one still have to manually "require" all these dependencies? If so, what's
the
point of using cask? I don't know much about cask, so please correct me if
I'm
wrong.

> Is there a particular reason why you don't want to use a package
installation?

What I've always been doing is to clone the git repositories. If the
Makefile
supports, I do "make && sudo make install", otherwise, I manually require
it,
along with all the dependencies. This works well if a package doesn't have a
bunch of dependencies that I haven't installed yet. However, I'm tired of
having
to go getting /cloning each dependencies, and then manually "require" them
in my
.emacs. I thought maybe cask would do something about this. But it seems
all it
does is to just grab the dependencies for me right?

The reason I always use my git clones is that it's convenient to make
changes
this way, if I need. I would love to hear your suggestions on this if
there's a
way of installing packages from MELPA/Marmalade while at the same time,
still be
easy to make changes in my git clone, and maybe contribute back to upstream.

Thanks,\\
York

On Fri, Apr 29, 2016 at 6:40 AM, Phillip Lord <phillip.lord@russet.org.uk>
wrote:

>
> I can do, but it will involve manually installing the dependencies of
> lentic also.
>
> Is there a particular reason why you don't want to use a package
> installation?
>
> Phil
>
> York Zhao <gtdplatform@gmail.com> writes:
>
> > This looks pretty interesting, so I decided to give it a go. I then
> > cloned the git repo, and ran "$ make". I could see that a .cask
> > directory has been created, and the dependencies has been installed in
> > it. I then read the comment in lentic.el. However, it only mentions
> > the usage when installing through MELPA/Marmalade which is not my
> > case. Would you please also add usage notes for manual installation,
> > like what I'm doing so that I can have everything up and running in 15
> > minutes?
> >
> > Thanks,
> >
> >
> > On Thu, Apr 28, 2016 at 11:59 AM, Phillip Lord <
> phillip.lord@russet.org.uk>
> > wrote:
> >
> >> <tomas@tuxteam.de> writes:
> >>
> >> > On Wed, Apr 27, 2016 at 05:32:58PM +0100, Phillip Lord wrote:
> >> >> "Tory S. Anderson" <torys.anderson@gmail.com> writes:
> >> >>
> >> >> > Looking at Lentic[1] it seems like something that has been thought
> >> out and
> >> >> > well developed,
> >> >>
> >> >> Thank you!
> >> >
> >> > FWIW, a while ago in the Org mode mailing list somebody wanted to
> >> > edit their message buffers as Org mode (and later make Mime messages
> >> > out of them containing the Org and an HTML version, courtesy of
> >> > org-mime-htmlize).
> >> >
> >> > Lentic was proposed to offer the alternative views (message/org).
> >> >
> >> > But I'm out of my depth somehow, so take with some amount of salt.
> >>
> >>
> >> I haven't tried that yet, but it sounds fun. I shall give it a go.
> >>
> >> Phil
> >>
> >>
>

Re: Any cool uses of Lentic?

[Phillip Lord]

York Zhao <gtdplatform@gmail.com> writes:

>> it will involve manually installing the dependencies of lentic also.
>
> I thought those dependencies have been installed by cask. So do you
> mean that one still have to manually "require" all these dependencies?
> If so, what's the point of using cask? I don't know much about cask,
> so please correct me if I'm wrong.


Cask can be used for personal Emacs configuration, but the Cask file in
lentic is for developer use. It's not going to help you here.


>> Is there a particular reason why you don't want to use a package
> installation?
>
> What I've always been doing is to clone the git repositories. If the
> Makefile supports, I do "make && sudo make install", otherwise, I
> manually require it, along with all the dependencies.

Yeah, that's hard work. I stopped doing this an equivalent workflow
quite a few years back.

> This works well if a package doesn't have a bunch of dependencies that
> I haven't installed yet. However, I'm tired of having to go getting
> /cloning each dependencies, and then manually "require" them in my
> .emacs. I thought maybe cask would do something about this. But it
> seems all it does is to just grab the dependencies for me right?
>
> The reason I always use my git clones is that it's convenient to make
> changes this way, if I need. I would love to hear your suggestions on
> this if there's a way of installing packages from MELPA/Marmalade
> while at the same time, still be easy to make changes in my git clone,
> and maybe contribute back to upstream.


Personally, I use the "use-package" tool, and then switch load-path
to a git repo for the packages that I have forked.

For your use case, I'd say quelpa looks like the way forwards: after
installing it, you just do

(quelpa 'lentic)

It will download lentic and all it's dependencies straight from their
repos. Then if you want to contribute, you fork, fix, PR and then switch
back to master once the time comes.

Phil

Re: Any cool uses of Lentic?

[York Zhao]

Thank you very much for the explanation. I've installed it from Melpa, and
have
played around a little bit. It's cool, however, I found that I had to look
into
your source code to figure out how to use it. In my opinion, this is OK
only if
one have a lot of time. I probably have missed something though.


On Fri, Apr 29, 2016 at 1:10 PM, Phillip Lord <phillip.lord@russet.org.uk>
wrote:

> York Zhao <gtdplatform@gmail.com> writes:
>
> >> it will involve manually installing the dependencies of lentic also.
> >
> > I thought those dependencies have been installed by cask. So do you
> > mean that one still have to manually "require" all these dependencies?
> > If so, what's the point of using cask? I don't know much about cask,
> > so please correct me if I'm wrong.
>
>
> Cask can be used for personal Emacs configuration, but the Cask file in
> lentic is for developer use. It's not going to help you here.
>
>
> >> Is there a particular reason why you don't want to use a package
> > installation?
> >
> > What I've always been doing is to clone the git repositories. If the
> > Makefile supports, I do "make && sudo make install", otherwise, I
> > manually require it, along with all the dependencies.
>
> Yeah, that's hard work. I stopped doing this an equivalent workflow
> quite a few years back.
>
> > This works well if a package doesn't have a bunch of dependencies that
> > I haven't installed yet. However, I'm tired of having to go getting
> > /cloning each dependencies, and then manually "require" them in my
> > .emacs. I thought maybe cask would do something about this. But it
> > seems all it does is to just grab the dependencies for me right?
> >
> > The reason I always use my git clones is that it's convenient to make
> > changes this way, if I need. I would love to hear your suggestions on
> > this if there's a way of installing packages from MELPA/Marmalade
> > while at the same time, still be easy to make changes in my git clone,
> > and maybe contribute back to upstream.
>
>
> Personally, I use the "use-package" tool, and then switch load-path
> to a git repo for the packages that I have forked.
>
> For your use case, I'd say quelpa looks like the way forwards: after
> installing it, you just do
>
> (quelpa 'lentic)
>
> It will download lentic and all it's dependencies straight from their
> repos. Then if you want to contribute, you fork, fix, PR and then switch
> back to master once the time comes.
>
> Phil
>
>
>
>

Re: Any cool uses of Lentic?

[Phillip Lord]

I probably need to make some stronger defaults, I think.

If there are any specific holes in the documentation do let me know.

Phil


York Zhao <gtdplatform@gmail.com> writes:

> Thank you very much for the explanation. I've installed it from Melpa,
> and have played around a little bit. It's cool, however, I found that
> I had to look into your source code to figure out how to use it. In my
> opinion, this is OK only if one have a lot of time. I probably have
> missed something though.
>
>
> On Fri, Apr 29, 2016 at 1:10 PM, Phillip Lord <phillip.lord@russet.org.uk>
> wrote:
>
>> York Zhao <gtdplatform@gmail.com> writes:
>>
>> >> it will involve manually installing the dependencies of lentic also.
>> >
>> > I thought those dependencies have been installed by cask. So do you
>> > mean that one still have to manually "require" all these dependencies?
>> > If so, what's the point of using cask? I don't know much about cask,
>> > so please correct me if I'm wrong.
>>
>>
>> Cask can be used for personal Emacs configuration, but the Cask file in
>> lentic is for developer use. It's not going to help you here.
>>
>>
>> >> Is there a particular reason why you don't want to use a package
>> > installation?
>> >
>> > What I've always been doing is to clone the git repositories. If the
>> > Makefile supports, I do "make && sudo make install", otherwise, I
>> > manually require it, along with all the dependencies.
>>
>> Yeah, that's hard work. I stopped doing this an equivalent workflow
>> quite a few years back.
>>
>> > This works well if a package doesn't have a bunch of dependencies that
>> > I haven't installed yet. However, I'm tired of having to go getting
>> > /cloning each dependencies, and then manually "require" them in my
>> > .emacs. I thought maybe cask would do something about this. But it
>> > seems all it does is to just grab the dependencies for me right?
>> >
>> > The reason I always use my git clones is that it's convenient to make
>> > changes this way, if I need. I would love to hear your suggestions on
>> > this if there's a way of installing packages from MELPA/Marmalade
>> > while at the same time, still be easy to make changes in my git clone,
>> > and maybe contribute back to upstream.
>>
>>
>> Personally, I use the "use-package" tool, and then switch load-path
>> to a git repo for the packages that I have forked.
>>
>> For your use case, I'd say quelpa looks like the way forwards: after
>> installing it, you just do
>>
>> (quelpa 'lentic)
>>
>> It will download lentic and all it's dependencies straight from their
>> repos. Then if you want to contribute, you fork, fix, PR and then switch
>> back to master once the time comes.
>>
>> Phil
>>
>>
>>
>>

Re: Any cool uses of Lentic?

[Phillip Lord]

Marco Wahl <marcowahlsoft@gmail.com> writes:

> Hi Tory,
>
>> Looking at Lentic[1] it seems like something that has been thought out
>> and well developed, but I feel I'm missing awesomeness that I know
>> must be there. How is it more than only a shortcut for indirect
>> buffers?
>>
>> Footnotes: [1]  https://github.com/phillord/lentic
>
> I think lentic is really great stuff.
>
> I use lentic for my init.el at https://github.com/marcowahl/.emacs.d.
> With lentic I have an additional view on the configuration file as
> Orgmode buffer.  The latter allows to structure the file with the
> features of Orgmode and export parts as documentation e.g. a
> readme-file.
>
> This would not be possible with just use an indirect buffer and switch
> on org-mode AFAICS.


That is really, really very nice indeed. You're clearly much more of an
org-mode user than I have, with quite extensive use of it's facilities.
It's the sort of structured commenting that I wanted from lentic in the
first place.

I'm about to add functionality so that lentic should work out of the box
with many forms of script -- I have python, and bash so far, but others
are easy to add. Lentic is nice at the moment, but setting it up for a
given file is too much of a pain; once this is easier I suspect I will
just use it routinely for all my file.

Just looking at your repo, you have "compile-docu.org". I do something
like this - you might find the `lentic-batch-clone-and-save-with-config'
function works for you.

Phil

Re: Any cool uses of Lentic?

[Marco Wahl]

>>> Footnotes: [1]  https://github.com/phillord/lentic
>>
>> I think lentic is really great stuff.
>>
>> I use lentic for my init.el at https://github.com/marcowahl/.emacs.d.

> That is really, really very nice indeed. You're clearly much more of an
> org-mode user than I have, with quite extensive use of it's facilities.
> It's the sort of structured commenting that I wanted from lentic in the
> first place.

Thanks :)

> I'm about to add functionality so that lentic should work out of the box
> with many forms of script  [...]

I am looking forward to seeing your developments.

> Just looking at your repo, you have "compile-docu.org". I do something
> like this - you might find the `lentic-batch-clone-and-save-with-config'
> function works for you.

Unfortunately I do not understand this function.  Could you please
elaborate on `lentic-batch-clone-and-save-with-config'?


Best regards,
-- 
Marco Wahl
GPG: 0x49010A040A3AE6F2

Re: Any cool uses of Lentic?

[Phillip Lord]

Marco Wahl <marcowahlsoft@gmail.com> writes:

>>>> Footnotes: [1]  https://github.com/phillord/lentic
>> I'm about to add functionality so that lentic should work out of the box
>> with many forms of script  [...]
>
> I am looking forward to seeing your developments.

They should be pushed fairly soon. Essentially, it means that lentic can
cope with a magic shebang line. Once you've done this, many scripts just
work automatically.


>> Just looking at your repo, you have "compile-docu.org". I do something
>> like this - you might find the `lentic-batch-clone-and-save-with-config'
>> function works for you.
>
> Unfortunately I do not understand this function.  Could you please
> elaborate on `lentic-batch-clone-and-save-with-config'?

Yeah -- as the name suggests it was meant for in batch use, but it can
be used interactively. You just do

(lentic-batch-clone-and-save-with-config
   "~/.emacs.d/init.el" 'lentic-orgel-org-init)

It should then open init.el, process it, and save the lentic form (so
"init.org" should appear).

That section of the code could be neated. Never enough time!

Phil

Re: Any cool uses of Lentic?

[Marco Wahl]

>>> Just looking at your repo, you have "compile-docu.org". I do something
>>> like this - you might find the `lentic-batch-clone-and-save-with-config'
>>> function works for you.
>>
>> Unfortunately I do not understand this function.  Could you please
>> elaborate on `lentic-batch-clone-and-save-with-config'?
>
> Yeah -- as the name suggests it was meant for in batch use, but it can
> be used interactively. You just do
>
> (lentic-batch-clone-and-save-with-config
>    "~/.emacs.d/init.el" 'lentic-orgel-org-init)
>
> It should then open init.el, process it, and save the lentic form (so
> "init.org" should appear).

Thanks.  I see clearer now.  It's now on my task list to actually use
lentic-batch-clone-and-save-with-config but I need some more time.

> That section of the code could be neated. Never enough time!

Exactly!


Best regards,
-- 
http://pgp.mit.edu/pks/lookup?search=0x49010A040A3AE6F2