Emacs Tiny Tools Project

Links and download

The most up to date version is in CVS. See instructions at the end of this page.

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 that you expect: even a novice Emacs user can 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]
File monitoring package, tinypath.el, in action (photo from Windows native Emacs 21.2). You can separate 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.

News

2002-09: Emacs 21.x compatibility issues are under work. library cleanup is now done. 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 and possibly include them into XEmacs. If you know XEmacs packaging system, please contact the author to get the work packaged properly.

Future goal: Provide Debian (.deb) packages for easy upgrade in Linux systems. Anyone who is familiar with the Debian packaging system is welcomed to send email to the address found in Developer list section.

Brief History

All the programs and documentation 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 ever 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 / 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.

Emacs Version Compatibility

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+   ( 20.7+ preferred )
    XEmacs: 20.4+   ( 21.1+ 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 20.7.3
    XEmacs 21.2.20

Developer list

Swatch Internet time (BMT), where 24h is divided into 1000 parts, you visited this page. Read more about the Biel Mean Time at http://www.gebsa.com.tr/internet_time.htm . Stop by Swatch resources at http://www.ryanthiessen.com/swatch/resources.htm . Follow this link for HTML time converter at http://www.mir.com.my/iTime/itime.htm . Free Javascrip source code for HTML pages is available at project http://js-tools.sourceforge.net

Jari Aalto jari.aalto@poboxes.com Usually on-line @700 BMT or UTC+2 18:00 local time. ICQ identification jari-aalto 82313129 [ICQ online status indicator]

Richard Kim ryk@dspwiz.com Co-Developer.

Mailing list information

There is mailing list for the project, where you can send questions and bug reports. The list is open (you do not have to be a subscribed member to post), so prefer sending bug reports to the list instead of directly to the maintainer, because the the problem will get wider audience. The list opened 2000-01. See WWW interface at http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/tiny-tools-users or use Mail interface:

Send a message with the word help as subject or in the body , to: tiny-tools-users-request@lists.sourceforge.net

subscribe [address=address]
unsubscribe [address]

In addition to SF archive, there is http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=tiny-tools-user&r=1&w=2

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 the cygwin kit available at http://www.cygwin.org/ (See link at the right hand corner and download setup.exe) If you want hassle-free and easy CVS binary for Win32 and not the whole Cygwin bundle, grab cvs binary from http://www.cvshome.org/dev/codewindow.html
        $ cvs -d :pserver:anonymous@cvs.tiny-tools.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/tiny-tools login
        password: [RET]
        $ cvs -z6 -d :pserver:anonymous@cvs.tiny-tools.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/tiny-tools co tiny-tools
After the above initial checkout procedure, all you have to do is to issue this command from time to time to read the updates:
        $ cd tiny-tools
        $ cvs update
A mall glitch concerning codewindow cvs binary reported by david x callaway dxc@xprt.net: I have found one funny bug with it, on nt. you can "cvs edit XyZ.c" even though the file is "xyz.c" with no complaint. this is ok, sort of, since the stupid win32 file system doesn't care, but the problem is when you later try to check it in the server complains that "XyZ.c" doesn't exist or some such. you end up having to edit CVS/Entries to fix it. the funny thing is you can "cvs status xyz.c" or "cvs status XyZ.c" and it will work fine either way.

$Docid: 2002-09-14 Jari Aalto $ Copyright (C) Jari Aalto. This material may be distributed only subject to the terms and conditions set forth in the Open Publication License, v1.0 or later (the latest version is presently available at http://www.opencontent.org/). Distribution of the work or derivative of the work for commercial purposes in any form is prohibited unless prior permission is obtained from the copyright holder. (VI.B LICENSE OPTIONS)

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