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How Emacs became my authoring playground—no Lisp required

Uli - Pronunciation: 'u:li, IRC: rhaen, Mastodon: https://digitalcourage.social/@rhaen

The following image shows where the talk is in the schedule for Sat 2025-12-06. Solid lines show talks with Q&A via BigBlueButton. Dashed lines show talks with Q&A via IRC or Etherpad.

Schedule for SaturdaySaturday 9:00- 9:10 Saturday opening remarkssat-open 9:10- 9:20 Making Org-Babel reactiveorg-babel 9:30- 9:50 Emacs as a fully-fledged reference managerreference10:10-10:30 org-gmail: A deep integration of Gmail into your Org Modegmail10:40-10:50 Studying foreign languages with Emacs, Org Mode and gptellanguages11:10-11:30 LaTeX export in org-mode: the overhaullatex 1:00- 1:20 An enhanced bibliography in org-mode for scientific research and self-directed learningbibliography 1:40- 1:50 Basic Calc functionality for engineering or electronicscalc 2:00- 2:10 How Emacs became my authoring playground—no Lisp requiredauthoring 2:30- 2:50 Blee-LCNT: An Emacs-centered content production and self-publication frameworkblee-lcnt 3:10- 3:20 GNU Emacs Greader (Gnamù Reader) mode is the best Emacs mode in existencegreader 3:30- 3:40 Org-mode GTD vs N-angulator GTDn-angulator 4:00- 4:10 Saturday closing remarkssat-close 9:30- 9:45 One year progress update Schemacs (formerly Gypsum)schemacs10:05-10:25 Juicemacs: Exploring Speculative JIT Compilation for ELisp in Javajuicemacs10:35-10:55 Swanky Python: Interactive development for Pythonswanky11:05-11:25 Interactive Python programming in Emacspython 1:00- 1:20 Emacs, editors, and LLM driven workflowsllm 1:40- 2:00 emacs-claude-code: Intelligent Claude Integration for Emacsclaude-code 2:10- 2:30 Emacs and private AI: a great matchprivate-ai 2:50- 3:10 Common Lisp images communicating like-a-human through shared Emacs slime and eevcommonlisp9 AM10 AM11 AM12 PM1 PM2 PM3 PM4 PM5 PM

Format: 10-min talk ; Q&A: BigBlueButton conference room https://media.emacsconf.org/2025/current/bbb-authoring.html
Discuss on IRC: #emacsconf
Status: Waiting for video from speaker

Times in different time zones:
Saturday, Dec 6 2025, ~2:00 PM - 2:10 PM EST (US/Eastern)
which is the same as:
Saturday, Dec 6 2025, ~1:00 PM - 1:10 PM CST (US/Central)
Saturday, Dec 6 2025, ~12:00 PM - 12:10 PM MST (US/Mountain)
Saturday, Dec 6 2025, ~11:00 AM - 11:10 AM PST (US/Pacific)
Saturday, Dec 6 2025, ~7:00 PM - 7:10 PM UTC
Saturday, Dec 6 2025, ~8:00 PM - 8:10 PM CET (Europe/Paris)
Saturday, Dec 6 2025, ~9:00 PM - 9:10 PM EET (Europe/Athens)
Sunday, Dec 7 2025, ~12:30 AM - 12:40 AM IST (Asia/Kolkata)
Sunday, Dec 7 2025, ~3:00 AM - 3:10 AM +08 (Asia/Singapore)
Sunday, Dec 7 2025, ~4:00 AM - 4:10 AM JST (Asia/Tokyo)
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Description

In this talk, I will share the story of my journey with Emacs as a writer, author, and storyteller. Over the years, I have crafted a personal workflow to write technical articles, analyses, and handouts using Emacs, Pandoc, Org Mode, and Zotero. I’ll demonstrate how this setup enables me to easily produce documents in PDF, DOCX, and EPUB formats on macOS and Unix-like systems—with potential extensions to Windows.

Rather than diving deep into complex Org Mode customizations, my approach focuses on maintaining flexibility in translating documents between formats. This workflow, developed incrementally over several years, illustrates how you can build a comfortable and efficient writing environment in Emacs without needing perfect Lisp mastery or an encyclopedic knowledge of Emacs internals.

I'll introduce the key packages I use and how they weave together into a cohesive personal authoring system—proving that Emacs can be a powerful yet approachable tool for writers. This talk is not a deep technical dive but a practical exploration of methodology and workflow that can inspire writers to harness Emacs in their own unique ways.

About the speaker:

I'm a writer with a strong passion for open-source software. As an agile coach, I enjoy helping people work together. I truly believe in the power of free code and prefer platforms like Codeberg over GitHub, just as I find Mastodon a friendlier space compared to X. I’m also deeply interested in audio and love capturing the world around me through my field recording podcast. At the heart of everything I do is combining these passions into practical workflows—especially using Emacs as a powerful and flexible tool to bring my ideas to life.

Questions or comments? Please e-mail emacsconf-org-private@gnu.org

Back to the talks Previous by time: emacs-claude-code: Intelligent Claude Integration for Emacs Next by time: Emacs and private AI: a great match Track: General - Watch