GNU ELPA - ement

Ement.el is published in GNU ELPA, so it may be installed in Emacs with the command M-x package-install RET ement RET. This is the recommended way to install Ement.el, as it will install the current stable release.

Ement.el is also available in GNU Guix as emacs-ement.

Ement.el is also available in Debian as elpa-ement.

The master branch of the Git repository is intended to be usable at all times; only minor bugs are expected to be found in it before a new stable release is made. To install from this, it is recommended to use quelpa-use-package, like this:

;; Install and load `quelpa-use-package'.
(package-install 'quelpa-use-package)
(require 'quelpa-use-package)

;; Install Ement.
(use-package ement
  :quelpa (ement :fetcher github :repo "alphapapa/ement.el"))

One might also use systems like Straight (which is also used by DOOM) to install from Git, but the author cannot offer support for them.

Ement.el is intended to be installed with Emacs's package system, which will ensure that the required autoloads are generated, etc. If you choose to install it manually, you're on your own.

These bindings are common to all of the following buffer types:

• Switch to a room buffer: M-g M-r
• Switch to the room list buffer: M-g M-l
• Switch to the mentions buffer: M-g M-m
• Switch to the notifications buffer: M-g M-n

• Desktop notifications are enabled by default for events that mention the local user. They can also be shown for all events in rooms with open buffers.
• Send messages in Org mode format by customizing the option ement-room-send-message-filter (which enables Org format by default), or by calling ement-room-compose-org in a compose buffer (which enables it for a single message). Then Org-formatted messages are automatically converted and sent as HTML-formatted messages (with the Org syntax as the plain-text fallback). You can send syntax such as:
  • Bold, italic, underline, strikethrough
  • Links
  • Tables
  • Source blocks (including results with :exports both)
  • Footnotes (okay, that might be pushing it, but you can!)
  • And, generally, anything that Org can export to HTML
• Starting in the room list buffer, by pressing SPC repeatedly, you can cycle through and read all rooms with unread buffers. (If a room doesn't have a buffer, it will not be included.)
• Room buffers and the room-list buffer can be bookmarked in Emacs, i.e. using C-x r m. This is especially useful with Burly: you can arrange an Emacs frame with several room buffers displayed at once, use burly-bookmark-windows to bookmark the layout, and then you can restore that layout and all of the room buffers by opening the bookmark, rather than having to manually arrange them every time you start Emacs or change the window configuration.
• Images and other files can be uploaded to rooms using drag-and-drop.
• Mention members by typing a @ followed by their displayname or Matrix ID. (Members' names and rooms' aliases/IDs may be completed with completion-at-point commands.)
• You can customize settings in the ement group.
  • Note: setq should not be used for certain options, because it will not call the associated setter function. Users who have an aversion to the customization system may experience problems.

Ement.el doesn't support encrypted rooms natively, but it can be used transparently with the E2EE-aware reverse proxy daemon Pantalaimon. After configuring it according to its documentation, call ement-connect with the appropriate hostname and port, like:

(ement-connect :uri-prefix "http://localhost:8009")

Fixes

• Another attempt at restoring position in room list when refreshing.
• Command ement-room-list-next-unread.

Fixes

• Restore position in room list when refreshing.
• Completion in minibuffer.

Fixes

• Error in ement-room-list command upon initial sync.

Additions

• Option ement-room-timestamp-header-align controls how timestamp headers are aligned in room buffers.
• Option ement-room-view-hook runs functions when ement-room-view is called. (By default, it refreshes the room list buffer.)
• In the room list, middle-clicking a room which has a buffer closes its buffer.
• Basic support for video events. (Thanks to Arto Jantunen.)

Changes

• Using new option ement-room-timestamp-header-align, timestamp headers default to right-aligned. (With default settings, this keeps them near message timestamps and makes for a cleaner appearance.)

Fixes

• Recognition of certain MXID or displayname forms in outgoing messages when linkifying (aka "pilling") them.
• Unreadable room avatar images no longer cause errors. (Fixes #147. Thanks to @jgarte for reporting.)
• Don't error in ement-room-list when no rooms are joined. (Fixes #123. Thanks to @Kabouik and Omar Antolín Camarena for reporting.)
• Enable member/room completion in compose buffers. (Fixes #115. Thanks to Thanks to Justus Piater and Caleb Chase for reporting.)

Fixes

• Avoid use of pcase's (map :KEYWORD) form. (This can cause a broken installation on older versions of Emacs that have an older version of the map library loaded, such as Emacs 27.2 included in Debian 11. Since there's no way to force Emacs to actually load the version of map required by this package before installing it (which would naturally happen upon restarting Emacs), we can only avoid using such forms while these versions of Emacs are widely used.)

Fixes

• Deduplicate grouped membership events.

Added missing changelog entry (of course).

Additions

• Command ement-create-space creates a new space.
• Command ement-room-toggle-space toggles a room's membership in a space (a way to group rooms in Matrix).
• Visibility of sections in the room list is saved across sessions.
• Command ement-room-list-kill-buffer kills a room's buffer from the room list.
• Set device_id and initial_device_display_name upon login (e.g. Ement.el: username@hostname). (#134. Thanks to Arto Jantunen for reporting.)

Changes

• Room-related commands may be called interactively with a universal prefix to prompt for the room/session (allowing to send events or change settings in rooms other than the current one).
• Command ement-room-list reuses an existing window showing the room list when possible. (#131. Thanks to Jeff Bowman for suggesting.)
• Command ement-tag-room toggles tags (rather than adding by default and removing when called with a prefix).
• Default room grouping now groups "spaced" rooms separately.

Fixes

• Message format filter works properly when writing replies.
• Improve insertion of sender name headers when using the "Elemental" message format.
• Prompts in commands ement-leave-room and ement-forget-room.

Additions

• Command ement-room-override-name sets a local override for a room's display name. (Especially helpful for 1:1 rooms and bridged rooms. See MSC3015.)

Changes

• Improve display of room tombstones (displayed at top and bottom of buffer, and new room ID is linked to join).
• Use descriptive prompts in ement-leave-room and ement-forget-room commands.

Fixes

• Command ement-view-space when called from a room buffer. (Thanks to Richard Brežák for reporting.)
• Don't call display-buffer when reverting room list buffer. (Fixes #121. Thanks to mekeor for reporting.)
• Retry sync for network timeouts. (Accidentally broken in v0.6.)

Internal

• Function ement-put-account-data accepts :room argument to put on a room's account data.

Additions

• Command ement-view-space to view a space's rooms in a directory buffer.

Changes

• Improve ement-describe-room command (formatting, bindings).

Fixes

• Retry sync for HTTP 502 "Bad Gateway" errors.
• Formatting of unban events.
• Update password authentication according to newer Matrix spec. (Fixes compatibility with Conduit servers. #66. Thanks to Travis Peacock, Arto Jantunen, and Stephen D.)
• Image scaling issues. (Thanks to Visuwesh.)

Fixes

• Apply ement-initial-sync-timeout properly (important for when the homeserver is slow to respond).

Fixes

• Autoload ement-directory commands.
• Faces in ement-directory listings.

Additions

• Present "joined-and-left" and "rejoined-and-left" membership event pairs as such.
• Process and show rooms' canonical alias events.

Changes

• The taxy.el-based room list, with programmable, smart grouping, is now the default ement-room-list. (The old, tabulated-list-mode-based room list is available as ement-tabulated-room-list.)
• When selecting a room to view with completion, don't offer spaces.
• When selecting a room with completion, empty aliases and topics are omitted instead of being displayed as nil.

Fixes

• Use of send-message filter when replying.
• Replies may be written in compose buffers.

Fixes

• Don't show "curl process interrupted" message when updating a read marker's position again.

Additions

• Option ement-room-unread-only-counts-notifications, now enabled by default, causes rooms' unread status to be determined only by their notification counts (which are set by the server and depend on rooms' notification settings).
• Command ement-room-set-notification-state sets a room's notification state (imitating Element's user-friendly presets).
• Room buffers' Transient menus show the room's notification state (imitating Element's user-friendly presets).
• Command ement-set-display-name sets the user's global displayname.
• Command ement-room-set-display-name sets the user's displayname in a room (which is also now displayed in the room's Transient menu).
• Column Notifications in the ement-taxy-room-list buffer shows rooms' notification state.
• Option ement-interrupted-sync-hook allows customization of how sync interruptions are handled. (Now, by default, a warning is displayed instead of merely a message.)

Changes

• When a room's read receipt is updated, the room's buffer is also marked as unmodified. (In concert with the new option, this makes rooms' unread status more intuitive.)

Fixes

• Binding of command ement-forget-room in room buffers.
• Highlighting of @room mentions.

Fixes

• Room unread status (when the last event in a room is sent by the local user, the room is considered read).

Additions

• Command ement-directory shows a server's room directory.
• Command ement-directory-search searches a server's room directory.
• Command ement-directory-next fetches the next batch of rooms in a directory.
• Command ement-leave-room accepts a FORCE-P argument (interactively, with prefix) to leave a room without prompting.
• Command ement-forget-room accepts a FORCE-P argument (interactively, with prefix) to also leave the room, and to forget it without prompting.
• Option ement-notify-mark-frame-urgent-predicates marks the frame as urgent when (by default) a message mentions the local user or "@room" and the message's room has an open buffer.

Changes

• Minor improvements to date/time headers.

Fixes

• Command ement-describe-room for rooms without topics.
• Improve insertion of old messages around existing timestamp headers.
• Reduce D-Bus notification system check timeout to 2 seconds (from the default of 25).
• Compatibility with Emacs 27.

Fixes

• Info manual export filename.

Changes

• Read receipts are re-enabled. (They're now implemented with a global idle timer rather than window-scroll-functions, which sometimes caused a strange race condition that could cause Emacs to become unresponsive or crash.)
• When determining whether a room is considered unread, non-message events like membership changes, reactions, etc. are ignored. This fixes a bug that caused certain rooms that had no message events (like some bridged rooms) to appear as unread when they shouldn't have. But it's unclear whether this is always preferable (e.g. one might want a member leaving a room to cause it to be marked unread), so this is classified as a change rather than simply a fix, and more improvements may be made to this in the future. (Fixes #97. Thanks to Julien Roy for reporting and testing.)
• The ement-taxy-room-list view no longer automatically refreshes the list if the region is active in the buffer. (This allows the user to operate on multiple rooms without the contents of the buffer changing before completing the process.)

Fixes

• Links to only rooms (as opposed to links to events in rooms) may be activated to join them.
• Read receipts mark the last completely visible event (rather than one that's only partially displayed).
• Prevent error when a room avatar image fails to load.

Fixed

• Info manual directory headers.

Fixed

• Temporarily disable sending of read receipts due to an unusual bug that could cause Emacs to become unresponsive. (The feature will be re-enabled in a future release.)

Fixed

• Function ement-room-sync correctly updates room-list buffers. (Thanks to Visuwesh.)
• Only send D-Bus notifications when supported. (Fixes #83. Thanks to Tassilo Horn.)

Fixed

• Function ement-room-scroll-up-mark-read selects the correct room window.
• Option ement-room-list-avatars defaults to what function display-images-p returns.

After almost two years of development, the first tagged release. Submitted to GNU ELPA.

Ement.el is published in GNU ELPA and is considered part of GNU Emacs. Therefore, cumulative contributions of more than 15 lines of code require that the author assign copyright of such contributions to the FSF. Authors who are interested in doing so may contact assign@gnu.org to request the appropriate form.

An Org-formatted version of the Matrix spec is available in the meta/spec branch.