1. Finish version 0.3 of Craft Roulette

Ooof, straight into a failure. I didn't even touch this during February.

2. Finish version 0.7 of Writing PHP with Emacs

I published a new version that contains all of the core content. There are still places I'd like to improve, but this was a big step.

3. Complete one session of deliberate practice

My original plan was to experiment with a fullscreen version of Splodey Boats, but I was feeling all 'sploded out so I went for something completely different: setting up my Atari ST development environment.

I'm still writing up the notes for this, but having a plan before I started helped keep me focused and made things much easier.

1. Run 90 miles

I had to skip two runs due to being iced in, but I still managed to hit this target. Just.

2. Create detail pages for all my major goals

All of my 2021 major goals now have detail pages.

3. Write a post-mortem for Splodey Boats 2000

Read the Splodey Boats 2000 Post Mortem. It's not very exciting.

Calling add-change-log-entry will insert a new date heading with your name and email address.

There are two variables to modify what is inserted:

• add-log-full-name - The full name to use.
• add-log-mailing-address - The email address to use.

Something like this will set both of variables:

(setq add-log-full-name       "My name"
      add-log-mailing-address "test@example.org")

Emacs will attempt to figure your name or email if either of these are nil.

change-log-mode looks for "ChangeLog" by default, but I use "CHANGELOG". Setting change-log-default-name will modify this behaviour:

(setq change-log-default-name "CHANGELOG")

The default indentation width is a little large for my tastes, so I add this to my configuration file to narrow things:

(add-hook 'change-log-mode-hook
	  (lambda ()
	    (make-local-variable 'tab-width)
	    (make-local-variable 'left-margin)
	    (setq tab-width   2
		  left-margin 2)))

Alternatively these can be set inside a ".dir-locals.el" file if you don't want to change the global behaviour:

((change-log-mode . ((tab-width   . 2)
		     (left-margin . 2))))

I use projectile a lot, so I wanted to make it easier to add log entries from within a project. I wrote two functions for this:

sodaware/projectile-goto-project-changelog

This opens the CHANGELOG file for the current projectile project.

sodaware/projectile-add-to-project-changelog

This works the same way as add-change-log-entry, but it automatically selects the project CHANGELOG instead of prompting for a file name.

The full code is below:

(defun sodaware/project-changelog-path ()
  "Get the full path to the current project's changelog file, or NIL if not found."
  (let ((change-log-file (concat (projectile-project-root)
				 (file-name-nondirectory change-log-default-name))))
    (if (file-exists-p change-log-file)
	change-log-file
	nil)))

(defun sodaware/projectile-goto-project-changelog ()
  "Open the CHANGELOG for the current project."
  (interactive)
  (let ((change-log-file (sodaware/project-changelog-path)))
    (if change-log-file
	(find-file change-log-file)
	(message "Project does not contain a changelog file."))))

(defun sodaware/projectile-add-to-project-changelog ()
  "Add a new entry to the CHANGELOG for the current project."
  (interactive)
  (let ((change-log-file (sodaware/project-changelog-path)))
    (if change-log-file
	(progn
	  (find-file change-log-file)
	  (add-change-log-entry))
	(message "Project does not contain a changelog file."))))

I added key bindings for both of these functions because I don't want to type that much:

(use-package projectile
  :diminish projectile-mode
  :bind
  (:map projectile-mode-map
	("C-c p G" . sodaware/projectile-goto-project-changelog)
	("C-c p L" . sodaware/projectile-add-to-project-changelog))
  :config
  (projectile-mode)
  :custom
  (projectile-keymap-prefix     (kbd "C-c p"))
  (projectile-enable-caching    t)
  (projectile-completion-system 'default))

Creating a gif using this setup works like this:

1. Create an elisp file containing instructions for emacs-director to run.
2. Run emacs with this file and the emacs-director bootstrap file.
3. Capture the output with asciinema.
4. Convert the asciinema file to an animated gif using asciicast2gif.

I created a small Makefile to handle these steps, so all I need to do is write the instruction file and then use make to create the actual gif.

Let's create a really simple gif that says "Hello, World!".

This is divided into two parts: a director-bootstrap command that tells emacs-director some basic information about the environment, and the director-run section that contains a full list of instructions.

For the bootstrap we can either use an existing user directory - useful if things need to be setup a certain way - or use the tmp directory.

The fun part is all contained in director-run, which tells Emacs exactly which steps to follow. Let's say hello!

(director-bootstrap
 :user-dir "/tmp/director-demo")

(director-run
 :version 1
 :before-start (lambda ()
		 (switch-to-buffer (get-buffer-create "*say-hello*"))
		 (menu-bar-mode -1))
 :steps '((:type "Hello, World!"))
 :typing-style 'human
 :delay-between-steps 1
 :after-end (lambda () (kill-emacs 0))
 :on-error  (lambda () (kill-emacs 1)))

The :before-start section can be used to set up buffers, switch the major mode, and run any other code that we don't want to look like it is being typed.

Here's the Makefile I use:

%.gif: %.cast
    asciicast2gif $< $@

%.cast: %.el
    asciinema rec $@ -c 'emacs -nw -Q -l util/director-bootstrap.el -l $<'

Calling make hello-world.gif will convert a file called hello-world.el into a .cast file, which will then be turned into an animated gif.

The finished image looks like this:

There are a few little gotchas:

• The finished gif will be based on the size of terminal where make was executed. If you create the gif from a fullscreen terminal you'll end up with a pretty big image.
• This process uses the terminal version of Emacs, so showing things involving the gui is not possible.
• When running code in :before-start there will be a frame or two before it is executed which can look a little weird.

None of these detract from the overall package, and it's a really easy way to create animated gifs of Emacs behaviour.

We'll finish with a slightly more complex gif:

This uses the same director-bootstrap as before, but has a few more steps:

(director-run
 :version 1
 :before-start (lambda ()
		 (menu-bar-mode -1)
		 (switch-to-buffer (get-buffer-create "*say-hello*"))
		 (emacs-lisp-mode))
 :steps '((:type "(defun say-hello ()\r")
	  (:type "\"Say hello to the world.\"\r")
	  (:type "(interactive)\r")
	  (:type "(message \"Hello, World!\"))\r")
	  (:type "\C-x\C-e")
	  (:wait 2)
	  (:type "\M-x")
	  (:type "say-hello")
	  (:type [return]))
 :typing-style 'human
 :delay-between-steps 1
 :after-end (lambda () (sleep-for 5) (kill-emacs 0))
 :on-error  (lambda () (kill-emacs 1)))

Normally to create a gif like this I would type everything by hand and record the screen with licecap or recordMyDesktop, so being able to automate things is a huge time saver.