ffs 0.2.2 released

ffs provides a minor mode for simple plain text presentations in Emacs, where the slides are separated using the page-delimiter, by default the form feed character (^L).

I wrote ffs in early 2022 for my LibrePlanet 2022 presentation the Net beyond the Web, and earlier this year decided to polish it towards being a proper package and submit it to GNU ELPA. The manual still needs some more work, but the overall package is in pretty good shape so I submitted for inclusion in GNU ELPA.

• Package name (GNU ELPA): ffs
• Official manual: https://kelar.org/~bandali/gnu/emacs/ffs.html
• Change log: https://kelar.org/~bandali/gnu/emacs/ffs-changelog.html
• Git repository: https://git.kelar.org/~bandali/ffs
• Backronyms: fabulous foolproof slides - for freedom's sake - ffs flips slides

ffs and I owe a debt of gratitude to Protesilaos for rounds of code review and feedback for improving and polishing the package in preparation for submission to GNU ELPA. You can watch videos of these sessions posted earlier on my website:

• FFS code review with Protesilaos
• FFS code review and Emacs extensibility with Protesilaos

Further, inspiration for parts of ffs's implementation was gratefully drawn from Protesilaos's Logos package for Emacs.

Dedicated to the loving memory of Farangis Yousefinia.

Below are the release notes.

Version 0.2.2 on 2026-05-21

First release of ffs on GNU ELPA.

The attempted build of ffs 0.2.1 within GNU ELPA build sandbox failed with an Error: void-function (org-texinfo-kbd-macro) due to use of #+macro: kbd (eval (org-texinfo-kbd-macro $1)) in ffs.org for better formatting of key sequences in the exported Texinfo copy. This seems to have happened for the specific case of generating a plain text README using ox-ascii where ELPA didn't load ox-texinfo. To try and mitigate this, a README.md has been added for use as the package README instead of ffs.org. If not sufficient, a Texinfo copy of the ffs manual will be shipped instead of the Org one in the next release.

ffs 0.2.2 also includes small fixes and improvements throughout ffs.el from Stefan Monnier, and additional feedback to be addressed in future releases.

Version 0.2.1 on 2026-05-20

The attempted build of ffs 0.2.0 within GNU ELPA build sandbox failed with a "Cannot include file" error on the "#+include: fdl.org" in the manual. So, as a workaround, we switch to using the official Texinfo copy of the GNU FDL license rather than an Org copy.

Version 0.2.0 on 2026-05-19

First release of ffs intended for GNU ELPA.

After a few years of inactivity, in early 2026 I decided to dust off ffs.el, polish and document it, and offer for inclusion in GNU ELPA as a proper package.

Default value of ffs-default-face-height changed to nil

To minimize unexpected and/or unnecessary changes out-of-the-box, the default value of ffs-default-face-height has been changed to nil.

ffs-edit-buffer-name demoted from user option to variable

This is not an important user-facing setting, so to help avoid overwhelming users with many options, this has been demoted from a user option to a variable.

Several new user options for customizing ffs's behaviour

As part of the effort to bring ffs more in line with the conventions of other existing Emacs packages, the mechanisms for toggling various parts of Emacs's interface to minimize visual clutter were changed from being minor modes to being customizable user options. These are the replacement new user options, with a default value of nil:

• ffs-hide-cursor
• ffs-hide-mode-line
• ffs-hide-header-line

Their value is buffer-local, and may be set globally using setq-default. See the sample configuration in the manual for an example of how to customize them.

The new ffs-page-delimiter user option defines the page delimiter inserted by ffs-edit-done when inserting a new slide. Emacs's page-delimiter regexp should be able to match ffs-page-delimiter's value, so if you use a custom page-delimiter be sure to customize ffs-page-delimiter accordingly.

The new ffs-echo-progress user option controls whether to display in echo area the progress through the slides. When non-nil, changing slides will also display the progress through the slides in the echo area. The format of the displayed progress can be customized using the new ffs-echo-progress-format user option.

The new ffs-edit-display-buffer-alist user option may be used to control the Window configuration for the ffs-edit buffer. By default, it will display the ffs-edit buffer in the same window.

The new ffs-edit-done-hook user option may be used to define hooks to be run at the end of ffs-edit-done after returning to the main ffs presentation buffer.

Lastly, a new ffs-find-speaker-notes-function variable was added to allow customizing the find function used for opening the speaker's notes file, defaulting to find-file-other-frame.

Version 0.1.0 on 2022-05-19

Initial publication of ffs.el as part of my personal configurations for GNU Emacs.

My first attempt at this concept was a now-archived ffsanim.el, a major mode implementation that used Emacs's animate library to animate slide texts onto the screen. Shortly after realizing the shortcomings of that approach, I abandoned it in favour a minor mode implementation and published version 0.1.0 of what is now ffs in my personal configs repository.

I used this implementation for presenting my LibrePlanet 2022 talk, The Net beyond the Web.

I picked "ffs" as the package name, the acronym for form feed slides.