Four new packages on the GNU Emacs Package Archive (ELPA)

Posted on June 25, 2014
Tags: Chess, ELPA, Emacs, Games, GNU, Poker, METAR, OpenSound Control

I have begun to push some of the Emacs Lisp Packages I have been working on over the last years to GNU ELPA, the Emacs Lisp Package Archive.

That means you can use “M-x list-packages RET” to install them in GNU Emacs 24.

OpenSound Control library

In 2007, I wrote OSC server and client support for Emacs. I used it back then to communicate with SuperCollider and related software.

osc.el is a rather simple package with no user visible functionality, as it only provides a library for Emacs Lisp programmers.

It is probably most interesting to people wanting to remote-control (modern) sound related software from with Emacs Lisp.

Texas hold’em poker

As my interest in poker has recently sparked again, one thing led to another, so I began to write a poker library for GNU Emacs. It was a very fun experience.

Version 0.1 of poker.el can simulate a table of ten players. Bots do make their own decisions, although the bot code is very simple. The complete game is currently played in the minibuffer. So there is definitely room for user interface enhancements, such as a poker table mode for displaying a table in a buffer.

Weather information from weather.noaa.gov

I started to write metar.el in 2007 as well, but never really finished it to a releaseable state. I use it personally rather often, but never cleaned it up for a release. This has changed.

It plugs in with other GNU Emacs features that make use of your current location. In particular, “M-x sunrise-sunset” and “M-x phases-of-moon” use the same variables (calendar-latitude and calendar-longitude) to determine where you are. “M-x metar” will determine the nearest airport weather station and display the weather information provided by that station.

Chess

Finally, after many many years of development separated by uncountable amounts of hiatus, chess.el is now out as version 2.0.3!

For a more detailed article about chess.el, see here.