Weekly Tips, Tricks, &c. Thread

This is a thread for smaller, miscellaneous items that might not warrant a full post on their own. [See this search for previous "Weekly Tips, Tricks, &c." Threads.](https://www.reddit.com/r/emacs/search?q=Weekly+tips&restrict_sr=on&sort=new&t=all) Don't feel constrained in regards to what you post, just keep your post vaguely, generally on the topic of emacs.

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I sometimes want to pick a random choice from a long org-mode checkbox list from among those items not already checked. I recently whipped up a little helper function for that: (defun random-choice () (interactive) (let ((n 0) (selected nil)) (while (search-forward-regexp (rx point "- [" (group nonl) "]" (+ nonl) "\n") nil t) (when (and (string= " " (match-string 1)) (zerop (random (setq n (1+ n))))) (setq selected (match-beginning 0)))) (if selected (goto-char selected) (error "No unfinished choice found"))))

Bar cursor gets lost quite often when a file is auto reverted due to external modification. How can I fix this? The issue does not happen for box cursor or other types.

Today I discovered by accident (and not in the info manual) that we can fill a whole Org tree (incl. sub-sections/-headings) with command \``fill-region`' and point on the headline. No active region is required.

you can have an org-mode file in source block in an org file

I don't get it. I just spent a few minutes reading the docs, and trying to understand what it does...reformats paragraphs somehow?

I'm playing around with swiper, and helm-swoop. There's a noticeable delay when I invoke either. I'm not using a huge file either, around 300 lines. Is this normal?

Yes. "Filling" is Emacs term for automatically rearranging newlines in a block of text (typically a paragraph) as to keep each line under `fill-column` characters length (80 by default, IIRC).

If you are running Emacs in the Terminal and using dark and light modes the following function will switch the cursor color for you. This example uses modus-themes, but you can obviously replace `modus-operandi` and `modus-vivendi` for any other pair of themes. (defun aj8/modus-themes-custom-settings () "If in terminal, change cursor color on theme switch." (when (not (display-graphic-p)) ; if using terminal (cond ((string-match-p "modus-operandi" (symbol-name (modus-themes--current-theme))) (send-string-to-terminal "\033]12;black\007")) ((string-match-p "modus-vivendi" (symbol-name (modus-themes--current-theme))) (send-string-to-terminal "\033]12;white\007")) (t (error "Unknown modus-theme name"))))) (add-hook 'modus-themes-after-load-theme-hook #'aj8/modus-themes-custom-settings)

Emacs has better long-lines support now?? I just noticed while looking at the latest additions in the NEWS: >\*\* Emacs is now capable of editing files with arbitrarily long lines. The display of long lines has been optimized, and Emacs no longer chokes when a buffer on display contains long lines. If you still experience slowdowns while editing files with long lines, this is either due to font locking, which you can turn off with M-x font-lock-mode or C-u C-x x f, or to the current major mode or one of the enabled minor modes, in which case you should open the the file with M-x find-file-literally instead of C-x C-f. The variable 'long-line-threshold' controls whether and when these display optimizations are used. That sounds like great news! Does anyone know what went into it? (edit to add: this was added some time this week. I rebuild from master weekly, and check out the NEWS diff each time)

Oh, people do this manually instead of using word wrap or truncate lines? Do you know why?

The [commit](https://github.com/emacs-mirror/emacs/commit/616da8fa8efa9023f56fa731072d877e2150afbc) said something about pretends the buffer is narrowed where there are long lines to improve performance. I don't really understand how it works though.

Thanks -- yeah I'm not going to pretend I understand any of the display code though.

I prefer not to have neck pain. Jokes aside, I find it genuinely hard to read when the text spans too long across the window.

Profiler is your friend here. Start the profiler, do the usual stuff, poke around in the report. If the function that takes the most amount of time is labelled as #<compiled function some-junk> then evaluate the corresponding function using C-M-x and repeat the experiment. You can usually find the identity of that function by looking higher up in the hierarchy.

I'm wondering if this affects only *files*, as the NEWS entry says, or if it impacts any buffer, even if it does not visit a file.

Great news, but I thought font-lock-mode was already the #1 culprit of choking on long lines (which this doesn't resolve)?

I'm learning about GNU Hyperbole and found this tip about using it with Avy: You can combine Hyperbole with Avy by creating an avy-dispatch function to press the Hyperbole action-key at target. (add-to-list 'avy-dispatch-alist '(?: . (lambda (pt) (goto-char pt) (hkey-either)))) This comes from [a recent message](https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-orgmode/2022-06/msg00686.html) on the org-mode mailing list posted by Juan Manuel Macías.

I had that thought in the back of my mind too, actually.

Auto-translate hook for reading emacs-china.org: (defun translate-emacs-china () (when (equal (gnus-method-to-server-name (gnus-find-method-for-group gnus-newsgroup-name)) (gnus-method-to-server-name '(nndiscourse "emacs-china.org"))) (require 'google-translate) (with-current-buffer gnus-article-buffer (save-mark-and-excursion (article-goto-body) (cl-destructuring-bind (beg . end) (last (mapcar #'car (save-excursion (gnus-dissect-cited-text))) 2) (let ((inhibit-read-only t) kill-ring) (delete-region (point) beg) (save-excursion (set-mark (point)) (goto-char (or (car end) (point-max))) (setq deactivate-mark nil) (let (google-translate-pop-up-buffer-set-focus google-translate-show-phonetic google-translate-display-translation-phonetic (google-translate-output-destination 'paragraph-insert)) (save-excursion (with-silent-modifications (google-translate-at-point)))) (kill-region (point) (point-max))) (forward-line -1) (yank))))))) (add-hook 'gnus-article-prepare-hook #'translate-emacs-china)

Is it correct practice to use `require` inside functions? I have a custom function that uses two package (org and consult) which I lazy-load. If the function is used, these packages should be loaded. I currently `require` them inside the function so that the packages are not loaded otherwise. Is this correct practice? Is there a better way to define function dependencies?

If whatever you are invoking from org or consult in your function is autoloaded, then the `require` is redundant. Otherwise, yes, using `require` within a function is fairly standard practice, since it will simply be a no-op if the package(s) are already loaded.

How do I correctly compile this piece of code? (taken from [here](https://github.com/minad/vertico/wiki)): ``` (advice-add #'vertico--arrange-candidates :around (defun vertico-format-candidates+ (func) (let ((hl-func (or (alist-get (vertico--metadata-get 'category) +completion-category-hl-func-overrides) #'identity))) (cl-letf* (((symbol-function 'actual-vertico-format-candidate) (symbol-function #'vertico--format-candidate)) ((symbol-function #'vertico--format-candidate) (lambda (cand &rest args) (apply #'actual-vertico-format-candidate (funcall hl-func cand) args)))) (funcall func))))) ``` When I try to compile it, I get the warning `‘actual-vertico-format-candidate’ is not known to be defined.`

I've been noticing general slowness activating any minibuffer command. For ex, I turned off vertico to use plain M-x, find-file, etc and they all take maybe 0.25 - 0.5 seconds for the prompt to appear. Running the CPU profiler claims over 70% of time is spent in `minibuffer-inactive-mode`. This seems to be running a bunch of functions to turn on all my global modes, where each of them is like <5% of the time, but then I guess they add up. Anybody got any suggestions?

I don't use/know vertico, so I'm guessing blind, but my first thought would be that you need to add somewhere earlier in your file either a `require` form for the package that defines `actual-vertico-format-candidate` or an `autoload` form for the function itself. In either case, I would wrap it in an `eval-and-compile` form.