Marcin Borkowski: Recent Changes

Updates in the last 30 days

2026-07-06

20:04 UTC (new) (history) 2026-07-06 Bank statement analyzer . . . . mbork – Some time ago, a friend of mine asked if I know an app which could allow him to analyze his spending based on bank statements. I did a quick research and I found a few tools like this, but nothing looked good enough for me to safely recommend it to him. Fortunately for him, he asked me that question in the exact moment in my life when (a) I had a lot of free time and (b) I wanted to spend it learning some potentially useful new skills. It didn’t take me long to decide to code such a tool myself.

2026-06-29

19:27 UTC (new) (history) 2026-06-29 opening pdfs in pdf-tools . . . . mbork – As I wrote many times, I use pdf-tools as main pdf viewer. I thought that one thing that would be nice is being able to open pdfs in it from outside Emacs. For example, texdoc could use it instead of Evince (which is pretty nice, but it’s not Emacs!).

2026-06-22

17:19 UTC (new) (history) 2026-06-22 Disabling minor modes with local variables . . . . mbork – I’ve known about file local variables for a long time. I also knew about the eval keyword, which can be used as a file variable, but instead of binding the given value to the (non-existent) variable eval, Emacs evaluates it. This is often useful, but the usefulness is diminished by the fact that Emacs nags the user whether it is safe to evaluate a form provided that way. (Of course, it is reasonable security-wise, and that’s why I didn’t set enable-local-variables to :all – I still prefer the nagging to the risk of executing untrusted code!) There is, however, one case where the eval form seems safe and useful enough to grant an exception: enabling or disabling minor modes.

2026-06-15

23:21 UTC (new) (history) Comments on 2026-06-15 Scrolling pdfs in other windows . . . . karthink – This is a common-enough need that the Emacs developers have you covered -- you don't need advice for this. From the release notes for Emacs 29: . . .
16:05 UTC (new) (history) 2026-06-15 Scrolling pdfs in other windows . . . . mbork – I have written about pdf-tools quite a few times – it’s a fantastic Emacs package for viewing and annotating pdfs without leaving the comfort of Emacs. It is not ideal, though – or at least, not ideal for me. One feature of Emacs I often use is the scroll-other-window command (bound to C-M-v), and its sibling scroll-other-window-down (C-M-S-v). They are extremely useful for example when reading documentation or watching live Markdown preview, and I wish they worked with the TeX and pdf-tools duo, too. Well, it’s Emacs, so it shouldn’t be difficult to make them!