Even more batteries included with Emacs
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- Emacs author frames the article as the third in a series tackling Emacs' discoverability problem, limited to stock Emacs 28.1+ features (no packages, no steep learning curves, no gimmicks like tetris or dunnet)
- dictionary-tooltip-mode displays word meanings in tooltips when hovering over text, drawing on local dictionaries first and falling back to Wiktionary for contemporary jargon
- find-file and Dired accept wildcards during interactive use — foo.txt can open multiple files at once, and Dired can produce custom listings of files matching patterns like /_region_*
- ffap-menu scans an entire buffer for anything resembling a file path or URL and presents the matches through a completing-read interface, though it misses propertized links from apps like EWW
- compare-windows is pitched as the author's favorite diff command — a lightweight, context-agnostic tool that compares text in two windows starting from cursor positions and stops at the first mismatch, also usable for directory comparison
Why it matters: For Emacs users, the article surfaces built-in capabilities (wildcard file opening, hover dictionary, ffap-menu) that the author argues have rarely surfaced in two decades of online Emacs discourse — potentially saving users from installing third-party packages for tasks stock Emacs already handles.
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