What's New in Emacs 30.1? (opens in new tab)

Fun to see someone decide to just write a faster JSON parser because they believed it was possible. They mentioned last year that libjansson had some intermediate layer with Emacs, which led to too many memory allocations: https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2024-03/msg00...

Also, the developer who wrote the parser (Géza Herman) was able to pass all of the tests with strange edge cases from https://seriot.ch/projects/parsing_json.html very quickly: https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2024-03/msg00...

With Emacs 30 I've stopped compiling from the master branch, preferring the tagged releases.

    GNU Emacs 30.0.92 (build 2, x86_64-pc-linux-gnu, GTK+ Version 3.24.33, cairo version 1.16.0) of 2024-12-03

It seems that most of the features I was eager to try from the master branch at various times (starting from native comp, then tree-sitter, use-package (although I've started using elpaca instead), modus themes, transient, etc.) have been merged. A lot of great features have been added to Emacs in recent years. Kudos to the maintainers!

As a longtime Vim user, I’ve got to say, the "completion-preview-mode" caught my eye. It’s pretty cool how Emacs is tossing in this slick, built-in predictive typing thing—kinda like Company or Corfu, but using its own minibuffer magic. Honestly, it’s a chill move that keeps things smooth without overcomplicating the vibe. Emacs just keeps doing its thing, polishing the edges while staying true to its hardcore, customizable soul—gotta respect that, even if I’m still Team Vim.

A note on one of the changes: "New package EditorConfig. This package provides support for the EditorConfig standard..."

Honestly the only reason to use this, and don't get me wrong, it's a huge reason, is to ensure windows users don't add CRLFs in their commits, and mess up diffs. Set `end_of_line = lf` and you're done.

`charset = utf-8` and `trim_trailing_whitespace = true` are also nice, but not as disruptive as `end_of_line`.

The other (indentation related) functionality should honestly be handled by language specific linters instead, as they can be syntax aware and allow for better control. I always disable those in practice.

This is the CLI tool to use during CI: https://github.com/editorconfig-checker/editorconfig-checker

> Which-key is now built in, which is good news for people who prefer that method of help (as opposed to typing C-h in a key chord).

Insane improvement. It's been years since I left Emacs, but which-key-style interfaces are the single feature I try to add everywhere. We need more of them, they are an easy UX-profit.

Here's a demo of how completion preview mode works

https://youtu.be/V1mnDK_tuAs?t=1097

So the Android work has been merged? Does this mean anything for Hu Jianwei's builds (of Emacs and Termux) at [1]? Having them in an obscure SourceForge repo seems less than optimal; getting Obtainium to understand the repo structure was not super fun...

[1] https://sourceforge.net/projects/android-ports-for-gnu-emacs...

Emacs just keeps getting better and better. Never really understood the motivation to fork or rewrite it. It's one of the best free projects out there.

> The Org URI protocol should now register automatically, meaning you can send data from a browser bookmarklet straight into org capture in your running Emacs instance.

Is there any risk of a website including a link using the Org URI scheme to load malware into your Emacs this way?

>Native compilation is now enabled by default.

And it shows. Now emacs is much nicer to use on Windows. Big thanks to the developers!

On NetBSD and OpenBSD, using emacs 29.4 I need to use gtk2 version. gtk3 will freeze X for a period of time, rarely forever when I try and use the menus.

Hoping that was fixed with this version :) But my guess the issue lies with gtk3, the NetBSD people had said in some cases gtk3 acts odd.

OpenBSD has the gtk2 compiled package, but on NetBSD I need to compile emacs/gtk2 myself via pkgsrc.

Outside of that all works great and waiting for 30.x to show up in packages. Congratulations.

30.1 on Ubuntu feels much better for C++ development on a remote server via lsp-mode's clangd-tramp compared to 29.3. I suppose that's thanks to the faster JSON parser?

Very cool but sticking with 29.2 sans native compilation, treesitter, org - I don't understand preview autocompletion even after watching the video - is that really useful?

I wish that websites would stop using "justified" text layouts. It reads particularly awful on mobile,and is hard to read in general.

Since this is basically just publicity for his book, see also https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/EmacsThirtyHighlights, especially if want to skip over low-quality non-comments like "Info mode is Emacs’s implementation of the TexInfo hypertext viewer" or "Programming mode for Ruby".