Emacs Tiny Tools Project

Links and download

Download, install instrustions and manuals. Note, that the most up to date version is in CVS. See instructions at the end of this page.

There hasn't been official releases for a long time, and the use of CVS is highly encouraged due to numerous changes. When the new installation method is ready, a new release will be published.

Links and more information about Emacs Other pages

Foreword

To build Emacs lisp package hierarchy /usr/local/site-lisp/net by pulling every Emacs Lisp Developers' packages from the Net, please visit project: http://perl-webget.sourceforge.net

Are these tools hard to install or use? The project may seem huge and difficult to install for those who do not have much previous experience on Emacs configuration and package installation. That's only surface and the impression that you may get from the size of the project. Things are much easier than you expect: even a novice Emacs user should be able to install the tools. At minimum you can install the project within 5-10 minutes with the help of the install document above.

[Picture. Emacs 21.2 tinytf.el package in action]
White paper management package, tinytf.el, in action (photo from Windows native Emacs 21.2). Many pages in this site have been created with it.

[Picture. Emacs 21.2 tinypath.el package in action]
[Picture. Emacs 21.2 tinypath.el package in action]
Above; File monitoring package, tinypath.el, in action (photo from Windows native Emacs 21.2). You can divide lisp package files to separate directories and there is no need to manually update variables load-path and Info-default-directory-list. Install new packages and run M-x tinypath-cache-regenerate and your Emacs is up to date. The cache also speeds up loading packages with require, load, load-library, load-file. Refer to above link install for more information.

[Picture. Emacs 21.2 tinyirc.el package in action]
Pastebot server interface in action from package tinyirc.el (photo from Windows native Emacs 21.2). PasteBot servers can be used as semi-pemanent stores for code examples, showing system error messages or sharing configuration tips. The PasteBot servers are handy in IRC channels where bigger texts (over 10 line) can be sent for review. Supports numbering lines in the messages for more detailled inspection of the problem: "Hey, look at line 19". Note: PasteBot servers are independent from IRC servers and can be used for any textual information exchange.

News

Future: Major changes in the installation and overall package structure is being planned. Installation and package activation will become more modular and easier to use. Utilities can be activated one by one basis. Monolithic tiny-setup.el will be phased out and split into separate files.

2003-05: Library cleanup continues. More functions have been checked and converted to prpoper prefixed to avoid possible clashes in Emacs (hasn't happened for many years though). Extensive speedup improvements to tinypath.el's load time.

2002-09: Emacs 21.x compatibility issues are under work. library cleanup is in progress. XEmacs compatibility is under testing.

2001-12: The CVS structure and package's directory structure has been redesigned. The HTML documentation is now bundled as well as the plain/text source. The namespace cleanup work has been finished and kit should now be free of any possible clashing functions. The setup center tiny-setup.el has been made better and more automatic. More features are now enabled. There are no known Emacs 21.1 compatibility problems.

2001-07: a "namespace-cleanup" work was started to ensure that all custom functions contain a proper library prefix. This cleanup work is necessary to isolate the tools from other, possibly conflicting, namespaces. It has no user visible chnages, but due to massive work that it needs, expect to see weird bugs in snapshots stamped after this date. Work is in progress to polish package build and release methods so that everything would be automatic. Latest releases of the code can be found only from CVS.

Next goal: Make all package to comply XEmacs packaging system. If you know XEmacs packaging system, please contact the author to get the work packaged properly.

Debian support: Debian (.deb) packages are currently provided as "beta" quality. The packaging method currently does not sophisticatedly activate features under Debian. The Debian packaging is maintained by Vincent Beffara <vbeffara AT free fr>. Add following to /etc/apt/sources.list:

        deb http://vbeffara.free.fr/debian/ ./

Brief History

All the programs in Tiny Tools kit are released under GPL http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html. Tiny Tools is an on-going "hobby", that started with one Emacs package, then next, and next in 1994 to help use Emacs more conveniently in daily work. Last Unix-only kit was released at the beginning of 1999 using Emacs 19.28 and 20.1. It had very little Win32 Emacs support and even more little XEmacs support (19.14). There has been period of inactivity, due to more busy days in regular daily work, nice long vacations at summer and moving the development environment from Unix to PC, changing version control software and repositories multiple times. The move to a PC platform was more painful than was expected because all the building tools had to be made from scratch. But the sourceforge pays the well the efforts.

Win32 Platform Support

Win32 users will be more than delighted to hear, that the current releases support quite well cross platform Emacs / XEmacs / Win32 / Cygwin / Unix. XEmacs support is now going strong too, even the Win32 XEmacs support. Latest Emacs releases are now supported much better, because of the availability of pre-compiled binaries for Win32.

Operating system and Emacs Version Compatibility

Operating systems currently supported are, in order of importance, are below. The Cygwin environment is almost identical to Unix, but it requires special handling enspecially when both Emacs version can use it (Win32 native Emacs and Cygwin Emacs). For example package tinyigrep.el can be used to grep recursively through many defined databases to locate and replace files in full project tree in both Win32 and Cygwin Emacs versions.
    Unix/Linux: Emacs and XEmacs
    Win32: Windows Native environment (NT Emacs and NT XEmacs)
    Win32: Windows Cygwin environment (Cygwin Emacs and Cygwin XEmacs)
The old releases supported Emacs versions way back to 19.27 and XEmacs 19.14, but such a long release backing is no longer possible. The minimum criterias for support are:
    Emacs   20.1+   ( 21.2+ preferred )
    XEmacs: 20.4+   ( 21.4+ preferred )
The release MAY WORK FINE in older Emacs releases and if you submit bug report, support for older versions can be considered unless there is too much work. The current development is done and tested using these versions of Win32 Emacs:
    Emacs 21.3
    XEmacs 21.4

Contact

There no mailing list for the project. Please send mail to the maintainer as needed. Include project's name in the subject or message may be classified as spam and discarded.

CVS update method

CVS is an excellent tool to keep up with the latest updates, fixes and new features. CVS for Unix is available at http://www.cvshome.com/ For win32 platform, the CVS comes with http://www.cygwin.com/ (See link at the right hand corner and download setup.exe)
        $ cd $HOME/elisp/sourceforge
        $ cvs -d :pserver:anonymous@cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/tiny-tools  login
          password: <pres RETURN key>
        $ cvs -z6 -d :pserver:anonymous@cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/tiny-tools co tiny-tools
After the above initial checkout procedure, all you have to do is to issue update command from time to time to read the updates:
        $ cd $HOME/elisp/sourceforge/tiny-tools
        $ cvs update

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